Sustainability Director, Southeast Asia

Rado Bank; Singapore; On-site; SGD 150,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial institution in Singapore is seeking a Sustainability Director for Southeast Asia. The role involves driving sustainability initiatives, developing innovative sustainability strategies, and engaging with various stakeholders to enhance the bank's sustainability efforts. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in ESG, leadership experience, and excellent communication skills. This position aims to promote sustainability that aligns with the bank’s overall strategy and business development goals.

Qualifications

• Strong understanding of sustainability, ESG frameworks, and green finance.
• Experience in developing and implementing sustainability strategies.
• Excellent communication and leadership abilities.

Responsibilities

• Drive the development of sustainability-focused strategy for Wholesale SEA.
• Advise leadership on sustainable product portfolio development.
• Support sustainable finance solutions and client engagement.
• Monitor sustainability assessments of clients and provide training.

Skills

Sustainability strategy development

Stakeholder engagement

Leadership and advisory skills

Understanding of ESG issues

Job description

Job Title

Sustainability Director, Southeast Asia

Job Description

Sustainability, including ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) is at the core of Rabobank´s values, since our company has been continuously driving future proof developments, willing to reinforce its position as the thought leader in the most relevant networks, establishing and developing future perspectives and positioning these insights into regional and international programs related to sustainability drivers and our core clients.

The Sustainability Director Southeast Asia (SEA) is responsible for developing, positioning and implementing our knowledge and business development on sustainability and to communicate this in the right manner with all relevant internal and external stakeholders. This includes a clear understanding of sustainability in relation to our internal policy (Sustainability Policy Framework), a very consistent approach regarding the climate change and the all our initiatives towards reductions of carbon emissions. Moreover, he/she contributes to the enhancement and implementation of the B4F strategy according to the UN Global Sustainable Development Goals. This position needs to coordinate the efforts, build solutions and products to deliver our strategy working in conjunction with the commercial and FAR research teams, besides performing a very strategic and commercial approach along with our RMs and clients in order to offer them enough trust in our expertise and knowledge.

This position will also drive sustainability initiatives and be the connector between local and global stakeholders, assuring that all internal knowledge is accessible to our commercial and risk teams, and that our dilemmas, policies, and challenges are fully discussed and aligned. The Sustainability Director Southeast Asia shall participate on the policy change and local regulatory discussions and feed our global structure with understanding about ESG challenges in Southeast Asia.

All in all, it is expected that the Sustainability Director SEA advances and promotes sustainability within Wholesale Asia through developing and leading a comprehensive, integrated and coordinated strategy and working with senior management, coverage bankers, products, clients, partners and external stakeholders such as ONGs.

The Sustainability Director SEA will be responsible to support the business and the Rabobank franchise in Southeast Asia in organizing and/or facilitating various initiatives aimed at realizing our sustainability goals in line with Rabobank´s sustainability strategy and Wholesale SEA’s KPIs.

The Sustainability Director Asia will report directly to the General Manager, Southeast Asia.

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities

Sustainability

• Pro-actively drive the development of a sustainability-focused strategy to contribute to the business goals of Wholesale Southeast Asia.
• Actively advise the Leadership Team where it concerns the development of an innovative Sustainability product portfolio for Rabobank in Southeast Asia in general or with specific initiatives.
• Support Wholesale Southeast Asia in the development of sustainable finance solutions and their engagement with clients on sustainable development and initiatives, green deals, carbon credit issuance and usage as receivables by clients and support their sustainable KPIs.
• Signal and initiate new Sustainability concepts relevant for the financial sector and translate these to the commercial opportunities for the business.
• Monitor and optimize the sustainability assessments of clients. Advise and train the business lines in the implementation of client photo.
• Development, coordination and execution of sustainability programs with clients and other stakeholders.
• Ensure knowledge sharing with staff on sustainability issues and innovations through training, education and knowledge sessions.
• Assure implementation of existing Sustainability policies and procedures and participate on changes and discussions.
• Contribute to propose quality, consistency and transparency improvements to the sustainability risk framework, when appropriate.
• Identify the exposure to sustainability risk issues associated with specific sector(s) and/or sustainability issues.

Strategic Alliances B4F

• Ensure relationships with external stakeholders are well maintained either directly or through other senior management members.
• Liaise with all Global Departments that deal with Sustainability Initiatives, polices and products, such as Agri3 , Carbon Bank and the Global Sustainability Team.
• Create strategic partnerships and alliances on sustainability transition in the F&A sector.
• Work alongside project leads for specific global ESG initiatives, such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in promoting the same in Asia.
• Report to the Leadership Team including monitoring of progress of the existing initiatives and platforms, progress reporting of new initiatives (pipeline) and platforms including proposals for engagements to new platforms and with new external stakeholders.

Client Events & Networking

• Represent Rabobank in relevant sustainability networks and support Wholesale Southeast Asia in the development and implementation of strategic client events on sustainability & innovation.
• Support the business in their relationship with relevant associations in Southeast Asia market.

Communications focused on Sustainability

• Ensure that key Rabobank Global/Group developments and initiatives related to sustainability are timely communicated to internal (local) stakeholders and staff as appropriate.
• Ensure external presentation material about Rabobank Asia and the approach to sustainability are up to date and ‘ready to go’.
• Ad hoc projects. Oversee and provide strategic communication advice on various projects that arise from across the business related to ESG
• Responsible to obtain and generate relevant F&A content with a focus on sustainability and innovation to share with our clients and other stakeholders

Meaningful Cooperative

• Promote cooperative development in all ESG initiatives across Rabobank Southeast Asia. Leverage the bank’s employee and business focused sustainability initiatives.