Where Finance & SDGs connect
UBP is one of the partners of the Building Bridges Summit that was held in Geneva on 10 October 2019. Organised by Sustainable Finance Geneva, Swiss Sustainable Finance and the Geneva Financial Center, this event’s mission was to build bridges between the financial world and NGOs, as well as to foster dialogue between stakeholders with the expertise and knowledge to speed up the development of sustainable finance.
Our Bank is proud to have supported this event as we share its goal of speeding up the financial industry’s contribution to achieving the UN’s seventeen sustainable development goals.
The Building Bridges Summit brought together 800 specially invited decision-makers, including several of UBP’s representatives and business partners.
It was divided into two parts: in the morning, Ueli Maurer, President of the Swiss Confederation, joined leading figures from government, finance, business, the UN and several international organisations to discuss how to promote the growth of sustainable finance and how to maximise our collective impact.
Institutional investors being the main drivers of growth in sustainable finance, the emphasis in the afternoon was on asset management expertise: banks, asset managers, pension funds and institutional investors got together to debate practical, innovative strategies designed to respond to sustainability issues at both Swiss and international levels.
The Building Bridges Summit formed part of the Building Bridges Week, which took place in Geneva from 7 to 11 October, coinciding with the General Assembly of the International Network of Financial Centres for Sustainability (FC4S), to which Geneva belongs.
“Let us jump to 2030: Sustainable finance is the norm. Enough capital is available to address the SDGs. The purpose of today is to generate and define a collaborative mindset and an action plan to get us there,”
said Fabio Sofia, President of Sustainable Finance Geneva
“Without the financial sector on board, transforming economic systems in line with the SDGs is useless & will fail”
said Peter Bakker, President & CEO of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
