Banks, financial institutions can look at having paperless branches

In a discussion paper on ‘Climate Risk and Sustainable Finance’, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said it intends to prepare a strategy based on the global best practices on mitigating the adverse impacts of climate change, learnings from participation in standard-setting bodies and other international fora.

The thrust of the strategy would include a broad guidance for all RBI Regulated Entities (REs) to have appropriate governance; strategy to address climate change risks and risk management structure to effectively manage them from a micro-prudential perspective, it said.

Further, the central bank has proposed climate risk-related financial disclosure and reporting for REs, capacity building, and voluntary initiatives.

On a voluntary basis, the REs should set up targets for increasing funding to green projects over short, medium and longer term towards certain identified sectors.

“In order to green the banking processes by making them more environment-friendly, REs could consider converting their branches to green branches by eliminating the use of paper in their operations, introducing option of e-receipts at their ATMs,” the discussion paper said.