Our approach to sustainable finance
Barclays is providing the green and sustainable finance required to transform the economies it serves. The transition to a sustainable economy is today’s defining opportunity for innovation and growth. As a large global financial intermediary, Barclays has an important role in helping channel investment, including our own capital, into new green technologies and low-carbon infrastructure projects. We also have a contribution to make in the advice, products and financing support that we offer our customers and clients.
Our sustainable finance strategy represents a commitment to using Barclays’ expertise, scale, and reach to support clients through the energy transition and foster social and sustainable development globally.
Entrepreneur and Innovation Programmes
| Barclays Innovation | Barclays is continually finding ways of improving processes, to collaborating with trailblazers – bringing new ideas to life is central to the way we support people, businesses, communities and the wider economy. |
| Barclays Rise | Rise, Barclays' global FinTech platform, creates the ultimate conditions for innovation and growth in financial services. Since 2015, Rise has focused on building a global community of the best minds in FinTech to disrupt, challenge and confront the way things are done in our industry. |
| Barclays Rise FinTech Insights | Insights from Rise and from FinTech founders and partners in our global community. |
| Female Innovators Lab Fund | Barclays and Anthemis are committed to bringing more women into entrepreneurship and closing the fundraising gender gap. |
| Unreasonable Impact | Unreasonable Impact is supporting growth-stage entrepreneurs whose ventures have the potential to employ thousands of people worldwide while solving some of the most world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges. |
| Barclays Accelerator | The Barclays Accelerator, powered by Techstars is a unique programme designed to take your business further. We're FinTech-focused and overflowing with opportunities |
| Eagle Labs | We incubate, inspire and educate ambitious UK founders and startups and help them to succeed and scale. |
| Barclays Black Founder's Accelerator | A programme especially designed to champion diversity in entrepreneurship and showcase Black Founder-led businesses. |
Corporate & Investment Bank
| Powering Possible | Barclays Corporate and Investment Bank (CIB) website. |
| Solving Sustainable | See possibilities where others see challenges with a global bank that can help you harness the power of change to drive sustainable growth. |
| ESG Research | We’re providing the latest insights to help solve sustainable, together to help businesses and markets seek new and innovative ways to achieve net zero. |
| Barclays Research Impact Series | Barclays ESG Research website page. |
| Sustainable and Thematic Research | This series of in-depth reports from the Barclays’ Research team which explores the social impact of economic, demographic and disruptive changes affecting markets, sectors and society at large. |
| Corporate Banking - Sustainability | Read our latest insights on the role that business can play in climate change, and how environmental sustainability and commerciality can go hand-in-hand. |
| Corporate Banking - Sustainable Green Solutions | A wide range of flexible financing and deposits to support your company's green agenda. |
| Corporate Banking - Client Stories | Our focus on building close working relationships means we have a deeper understanding of individual business requirements and can offer more relevant products and solutions. Hear our clients tell their story. |
Treasury green programmes
| Barclays Green Bonds | At Barclays, we want to ensure that our customers and clients have access to financing that places green principles at its core and are committed to put our beliefs into practice with our Green Issuance Framework. |
| Sustainable Impact Capital Programme | Our Sustainable Impact Capital portfolio, led by Barclays’ Principal Investment team, will invest £500m by 2027 in the equity of fast-growing, innovative and environmentally-focused early-stage technology companies, whose values are aligned with those of Barclays and which target the goals and timelines of the Paris Agreement. |
Private Banking and Wealth Management
| Influence tomorrow | Barclays Private Bank website. |
| Private Banking – Sustainable Portfolio Management | We manage sustainable portfolios for a broad range of clients, ranging in size from £5m to £500m. Our clients include large institutions, sovereign wealth funds, charities and not-for-profits, family offices and private clients. |
£500m investment in climate-tech
Through our Sustainable Impact Capital portfolio, we aim to fill growth stage funding gaps to help accelerate and scale catalytic and strategic solutions to environmental challenges, with an enhanced focus on decarbonisation technologies that are enabling transition within carbon intensive sectors.
Our Sustainable Impact Capital portfolio has a mandate to invest up to £500m of equity capital in global climate-tech start-ups between 2020 and 2027, helping to accelerate the transition towards a low-carbon economy.
Since launch in 2020, our investments have supported many aspects of climate-tech innovation, from property retrofit solutions to long-duration energy storage and hydrogen technologies. We have invested £138m into 21 innovative companies to date.
The investment mandate was increased from £175m to £500m in December 2022, reflecting the success to date.
$1trn Sustainable and Transition Financing
In light of the progress made against our previously announced targets, and after a strategic review of the Group’s capabilities, market demand and growth opportunities, in December 2022, Barclays announced a new target to facilitate $1trn of Sustainable and Transition Financing between 2023 and the end of 2030.
This followed our two previously announced targets: to deliver £150bn of social, environmental, and sustainability-linked financing by 2025, which we surpassed in 2021, and to deliver £100bn of green financing by 2030, which we surpassed in 2023.
The $1trn target encompasses the green, social, transition and broader sustainability-linked financing requirements of clients including corporates, governments and the public sector, financial institutions and consumers. Financing of climate and environmental solutions including green mortgages, energy efficient technology and renewable energy, as well as financing for broader social and sustainability work, including sustainability-linked structures and areas such as affordable housing, will all count towards the target.
During 2023, we facilitated $67.8bn of sustainable and transition financing. $67.4bn was sustainable financing and $0.4bn was transition financing that qualified against our new Transition Finance Framework. This facilitation in a challenging market demonstrates our continued focus on supporting our clients on their sustainability journeys.