Bank for Sustainability: Natixis CIB
Anchoring transition
For consistently punching above its weight on sustainability, creating innovative proprietary tools and methodologies to reengineer its balance sheet and power sustainable finance while providing incisive thought leadership to move the market forward, Natixis CIB is IFR’s Bank for Sustainability.
In a year defined by heightened geopolitical instability, increased scrutiny of sustainability and diverging regional momentum, Natixis CIB had the conviction to ramp up its efforts and invest more time and resources to position itself at the forefront of the debate on transition finance.
“We are developing new depth on transition and supporting origination with intelligent content,” said Orith Azoulay, global head of Natixis CIB's influential Green and Sustainable Hub.
Getting to this point has been a journey of more than six years for the French bank, which has been using its unique colour-coded green weighting factor capital allocation tool since 2019 to monitor its climate strategy and transform its balance sheet.
Natixis also developed its transition plan assessment initiative as an extension of the GWF to assess clients’ potential for achieving credible transition plans and this forward-looking analysis also reinforces the credibility of the bank's net-zero strategy.
In 2025, Natixis embedded the GWF and TPA deeper into origination, structuring and portfolio steering, giving the bank an edge in sustainable finance that was rewarded with sustainable loan coordinator roles and other mandates.
The GWF is producing results. Green assets on the bank’s balance sheet have increased from 22% in 2020 to 35% in 2024 and “brown” assets declined from 43% to 28% in the same period. The capital allocation tool is also helping the bank meet its objective to grow its “green revenues” at 1.5 times that of the overall CIB revenues between 2023 and 2026, which Natixis says has already been met.
Work is continuing to refine the GWF and the TPA with a view to 2026.
“We are never satisfied with our current methodologies and tools as we want to make sure that we have the most relevant and sound picture of transition, which we see as an internal tool but also as an origination tool because it’s feeding far more thoughtful discussions with our clients,” Azoulay said.
In 2025, Natixis deepened its ESG integration into syndication and structuring processes, optimising bond investor scoring, book analysis and loan structuring to meet investors’ disclosure requirements under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation.
This was done by extending the GWF to include climate trajectory monitoring, transition risk assessment and commercial planning to generate environmental data that Natixis uses to also create co-lending partnerships with ESG investors, unlocking new pockets of liquidity for clients.
The TPA tool will be expanded and rolled out in 2026 to prioritise financing for credible science-based transition plans and will be used by front-office teams and to support sector decarbonisation targets.
Integrating the GWF and TPA tools gives Natixis a powerful ESG evaluation system that few other banks can match, a system that influences pricing, structuring and capital allocation decisions and reinforces the bank’s sustainable finance franchise.
In addition to debt financing, Natixis has more than US$9bn of assets under management in its thematic equity derivatives index-based structured solution, focused on areas such as biodiversity, water, climate and sustainable development goals.
Natixis is planning to further expand its GWF and TPA tools in 2026 to include geospatial data-based environmental analysis and avoided project-level emission calculations. Studies are also underway to roll out GWF to the portfolios of other members of parent Groupe BPCE.
To cap a busy year, Natixis launched a dedicated setup for advisory services to help clients with all elements of transition strategies by giving a “whole of bank” approach across CIB, which has attracted its first mandates, including a collaboration with InfraVie Critical Metals Fund, in which the bank was financial and ESG adviser.
Natixis also launched a more in-depth dialogue for its top 50 clients, expanding an offering that initially focused on SSA clients.
“What makes us proud, in addition to advisory, is that we also launched ESG content coverage. The intention is to be clients’ go-to bank when it comes to ESG on any topic they may have beyond transactions,” said Laurie Chesne, head of green and sustainable financing and advisory for EMEA.
All Natixis’ work is backed by Groupe BPCE’s Vision 2030 strategy, which aims to align portfolios with net-zero emission trajectories, expand solutions for clients’ energy transitions, scale up green financing and reduce the group’s carbon footprint. Groupe BPCE is France’s second-largest banking group and includes Natixis Investment Managers, which had assets under management of just under US$1.5trn as of June 30, as well as retail banks Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Epargne.
Intelligent content
Natixis’ widely respected Green and Sustainable Hub has produced market-leading research since its creation in 2017. It published its first piece on transition in 2018, and one of the first investor surveys on transition finance, dialogue and case studies.
It has continued to pump out conceptual research and market education that shapes product innovation, structuring and advisory, and has positioned Natixis as a leading voice in the market’s transition finance narrative.
“We are really thinking of transition as a franchise,” said Cedric Merle, head of the centre of expertise and innovation at the Green and Sustainable Hub.
Natixis has played a key role in shaping international standards, including the Loan Market Association's Transition Loan Guide that was published in October, and the International Capital Market Association’s discussions about climate transition finance.
“It was very important to us that the outcome allows the market to do some ambitious transactions,” Azoulay said.
“Our two red lines were very clearly stated: there has to be a transition plan at the entity level, and it needs to be standalone. We want to protect the integrity of green and make sure that when we speak about transition, we put in some safeguards to define it.”
Transition has been featured three times by Green Hub TV, a monthly 30-minute broadcast on YouTube that was launched by Natixis to showcase its expertise.
An episode in June on transition planning was followed by another in November with the results of the bank’s transition planning investor survey and December's episode featured the new transition finance guidance. Other topics include tackling deforestation across the supply chain and adaptation in climate strategies.
Green Hub TV also showcased one of Natixis's most impactful pieces of thought leadership titled “Sustainability backlash? Fact & Fantasies”, making Natixis one of only a handful of banks to tackle the subject head on.
“We try to hear legitimate criticism when it comes to sustainable finance. Of course, you cannot argue with climate denial but there are some shortcomings of sustainable finance that need to be addressed. We think that articulating that makes it more convincing,” said Merle.
The Green and Sustainable Hub also plays an important role in addressing new and complex transition topics that the market has yet to fully define.
They include the managed phase-out of fossil fuel assets, including coal-fired power plant decommissioning; carbon lock-in, which measures and mitigates the risk of embedding emissions into assets with long lifespans; enabling technologies, that are not low carbon but are needed for decarbonisation; and avoided emissions.