Or, read below what they had to say about their personal journeys, current roles, inspirations, highlights and challenges, and their ambitions for the future.

Supriya: “Born in India, I moved to the UK two decades ago, and since then, have mostly worked in various roles in banking. My journey into sustainability started in 2019 when I picked up the role for climate reporting for NatWest Group. The role has gradually grown, and I now also deal with climate measurement, transition planning, and advancing our sustainability agenda.”

Caroline: “I had an interesting journey, starting out in hardcore balance sheet restructuring, looking at M&A transactions and financing those globally, which then led to a career break where I decided to work in the third sector, spending a lot of time looking at social programmes for disadvantaged neighbourhoods in London and helping with education programmes in primary schools, and that gave me a detailed insight of what is going on in public life on a daily basis. So, when I wanted to rejoin the financial services industry, I raised the question in my interview with NatWest what they are doing with regards to sustainability and ESG. Since then, my experience from the third sector, interest for and involvement in biodiversity advisory, as well as my chemistry degree, has helped me to build out the Climate and ESG Capital Markets function at NatWest and help customers define their strategies around climate and sustainability.”  

Maria: “I was born in India and grew up in Canada. I was always passionate about international development and studied that in my undergraduate degree. Of course, afterwards I had ambitions to ‘change the world’ … But a key moment for me came when I studied for my masters at LSE and Lord Nicholas Stern published the Stern review, one of the most influential papers on climate change. Since then, I have been working on climate change, looking at and tracking climate-related financial flows into the developing world and looking at what government policies are doing to enable decarbonisation. I did my PhD in that field, too, and have been working in consulting firms before joining NatWest.”

Caroline: “I have the pleasure of leading a great team which is of a much younger generation than myself and is passionate about this topic. So, this is my daily inspiration, as well as my two children. My job is all about our customers and how they embed ESG in their strategies, what their decarbonisation pathways look like, and how we can support them through funding, financing, and other transactions. What we see every day is that when we talk about the financial reality and impact of climate change it really hits home for everyone.” 

Maria: “I am a qualitative researcher, but I am now dealing a lot with quantitative data, helping our clients with their data and how it can support their work. Answering key questions with the help of data is exciting. I am also looking into which financing we should stop to help with decarbonisation and how we can assess new players and new solutions, and how we can help our customers access those new solutions. Overall, I have really benefitted from thinking about how to finance new solutions; it has been a humbling experience.”

Supriya: “Numbers fascinate me as an accountant and seeing that carbon is becoming part of decision-making is very exciting. In my role, I assess the carbon impact of our lending activities and look at how we can help decarbonisation through reshaping our balance sheet. I also sit on the board of a charity and am getting involved in their climate journey, which is very interesting. We all have a role to play – we can guide our customers, we can help externally, and we can all collaborate.”

Supriya: “Over the last two years, I have spent a lot of my time on NatWest’s climate transition plan, assessing what we are doing now and what we want to do in the future. Climate data, assessing climate impacts based on today’s actions and future actions, and applying the right methodologies all present a challenge. It’s been a learning journey, and it has been very important to work with our business and our customers to better understand. Now, it is exciting to see how we can retrieve and publish more and more data, but we are aware that there are a lot of dependencies and enhancements required as data and methodologies improve.” 

Maria: “What gets me excited is that we are pioneers despite all the climate guidance that is out there, because there is a difference in what the guidance says and how you implement it. There is no playbook for the implementation, and it’s exciting that we are willing to go into the forerunning and decide how to look at sectors today and how we approach credit decisions, risk assessments and opportunity assessments in an environment where data is not perfect. This is going to be the biggest reallocation of capital, and a rewiring of thinking, which is incredibly inspiring. We are dreaming of a world that is so much better, so much cleaner, so much more resilient, and addressing social issues. If we don’t get it right, it has a lot of consequences.”

Supriya: “There has been good momentum recently on the development of climate and sustainability standards. It’s great that we now have sustainability standards such as from the International Sustainability Standards Board which will drive a level of consistency, enabling comparability across companies and help with wider decision-making beyond company level. We will continue to participate in the further development of the standards.” 

Caroline: “It’s interesting to reflect on where we have come from and how the discussion is now around transition, decarbonisation, biodiversity, adaptation, physical risk, and more. There’s still a lot to be done, but many issues have become more quantifiable and therefore more understandable. Standardisation is important, and so is regulation to focus the mind, and it is good to see the progress here.  Looking into the future, at a higher level, we need to reduce our consumption, which means we need to get on with less or do it better.” 

Maria: “I am excited about the evidence and data we now have available to demonstrate that the transition is coming and helping our customers see the key tipping points. Within the bank, my role is to challenge our thinking and to initiate a rethink of how we look at sectors and at companies. What are the things that will provide solutions in the future? What is inhibiting decarbonisation? How are our customer needs changing? And how do we become the bank that can anticipate this change and be at the forefront of the transition to help our customers?”

Stayed tuned for future episodes, with podcast #2 to be released next month on our channel, when we will continue to explore inspiring stories from specialists at NatWest and beyond and the impact of women in sustainability. Amongst others, we’ll be asking our next guests three questions that Caroline, Maria and Supriya have chosen: “When the dust is in your face and you are at the bottom, what makes you stand up and fight on?”; “What is your top challenge and what is your key motivator?”; and “What is your favourite book or podcast on the topic of sustainability?”