ASFI is working to support and encourage stronger leadership from financial institutions to drive progress on sustainable finance.
Finance Sector Leadership
ASFI’s Sustainable Finance Action Plan (2025-27) highlights the importance of supporting leadership and capability uplift across the finance sector to unlock progress towards Australia’s climate, environment and social inclusion ambitions.
Leadership is critical to sharpening organisational focus on sustainability, driving internal buy-in and culture, and facilitating action across the real economy. Equally, building capabilities across all levels of finance sector professionals is key to ensuring individuals can navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of sustainable finance, understand emerging issues, and build the partnerships that will be needed.
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Our Finance Sector Leadership Work
Our 2023 Progress Tracker indicated that as little as 7% of financial professionals have green skills, lagging other industries critical to achieving global sustainability targets. And Australia has a lower concentration of green talent in the finance sector than countries such as US, Germany, UK & Canada.
In more mature professions such as accounting, banking, and investment, complex ecosystems exist to support capability that include: universities providing a large range of undergraduate, post-graduate and executive education courses; industry bodies that run accreditation systems for professionals including ongoing requirements for professional learning; a broad range of providers of courses that can count towards continuing professional development; and a well-established pathway for people from university or other technical qualifications into the profession.
Given its early stage of development, the sustainable finance profession is yet to establish this sort of ecosystem. ASFI is uniquely placed to accelerate the development of a sustainable finance ecosystem to support capability development and underpin trust in and credibility of sustainable finance as a profession
In 2025, ASFI is continuing a variety of initiatives to strengthen sustainable finance leadership. These are listed below.
ASFI initiatives to strengthen finance sector leadership
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A Framework for Sustainable Finance Capabilities
ASFI has developed a framework to guide institutions to to develop the mindsets, behaviours and skills needed to power the transformation required to deliver sustainable finance commitments and ambitions.
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ASFI Learn
In 2025, ASFI will continue to develop and deliver both online modules and face-to-face trainings foro the finance sector on a range of sustainable finance topics and skillsets
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Member Leadership Working Groups
This is a cohort-based program for both senior and junior professionals from ASFI member organisations looking to share and learn best practice strategies to drive sustainable finance
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Limitless Mentoring Program
Driven by the pursuit of limitless impact, our mentor program for sustainable finance professionals (‘Limitless’) is a new approach to mentoring - developing the capability the sector needs to drive the impact the world needs.
