ISO/TC 322 - Sustainable finance

This document gives guidance to organizations on the application of overarching sustainability principles, practices and terminology for financing activities. It addresses what is material from the perspective of the organization and of its stakeholders. This document is applicable to all organizations active in the financial sector, including, but not limited to, direct lenders and investors, asset managers and service providers. Beyond financial institutions and intermediaries, this document can be used by other parties in the financial sector such as providers or recipients of sustainable finance, governmental organizations, public and private sector institutions, business entities, industry associations, financial market regulators, and supervisory and control bodies.

This document establishes a framework and outlines a process to identify criteria for environmental impacts and performance to take into account when considering projects, assets and activities seeking finance. This document also gives guidance on assessing the risks and opportunities that can arise in applying environmental criteria to projects, assets and activities. It is applicable to parties seeking finance, providing finance or other interested parties.

This document provides a non-exhaustive list of relevant basic concepts, key initiatives and terms that are in common use in the global community of sustainable finance, and have been identified by ISO/TC 322 as helpful to facilitate a greater understanding of the topics suggested by sustainable finance practitioners, including but not limited to: financial regulators, development and commercial banks, asset managers, investors, international initiatives and researchers. The terms included in this document have been selected because they are: widely accepted and used in financial markets; sourced from supranational organization(s) or initiative(s), or national regulatory authorities; NOTE With priority given to the source with the larger geographic coverage. likely to be used in documents from ISO/TC 322 and other related International Standards; of international prevalence and interest.

This document provides requirements and guidelines for development, implementation and presentation of sustainable finance products and services. This document enables sustainable finance practitioners to define the properties of self-developed sustainable finance products and services, integrate sustainability considerations into existing finance products and services, and evaluate external sustainable finance products and services. This document supports the implementation of sustainable finance products and services, the fair promotion and transparent reporting of sustainability performance.