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Zurich Resilience Solutions and GoImpact Capital Partners forge strategic alliance to bolster climate resilience across Asia Pacific

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HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 4 December 2024 – Zurich Resilience Solutions (“ZRS”), the commercial risk advisory and services unit of Zurich Insurance Group (Zurich), and GoImpact Capital Partners (“GoImpact”) are pleased to announce a strategic alliance aimed at empowering businesses in Asia Pacific to address the growing challenges of climate change.

This collaboration integrates ZRS’ advanced physical climate risk analysis, proprietary climate and financial loss data, and specialized tools with GoImpact’s sustainability education expertise, delivering a comprehensive solution to help businesses identify, assess, and adapt to climate risks.

Enhancing climate resilience with ready-to-go solutions

The partnership offers a ready-to-go suite of solutions that address the urgent need for actionable climate adaptation strategies. Businesses can benefit from:

  • Data-driven climate risk assessments: ZRS’ proprietary tools to evaluate exposures to physical climate risks like extreme weather and supply chain disruptions.
  • Climate resilience guidance and training: Support for organisations to build resilience in their assets, operations, and people.
  • ESG knowledge upskilling: GoImpact’s structured sustainability learning programmes to keep companies informed about market trends and regulatory requirements.
  • Regulatory reporting support: Assistance in meeting disclosure and reporting requirements related to physical climate risks.

By combining ZRS’ technical expertise with GoImpact’s practical learning resources, the alliance delivers a robust toolkit for businesses to enhance resilience and seize opportunities in the sustainability landscape.

Driving climate resilience and sustainability in business

Initially targeting businesses in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, the strategic alliance aims to address key climate risks such as extreme weather events, supply chain disruptions, and operational vulnerabilities. Leveraging ZRS’ deep knowledge in climate resilience and GoImpact’s strong regional presence in sustainability advocacy, the alliance is well-positioned to empower companies to implement effective climate adaptation solutions.

Commenting on the partnership, Dr Amar Rahman, Global Head Climate & Sustainability Solutions, Zurich Resilience Solutions said: “Zurich Resilience Solutions’ partnership with GoImpact highlights the critical role of education in fostering climate resilience. The appetite for implementing effective solutions hinges on understanding the challenges at hand and the potential impact of inaction on business operations.”

“Through this collaboration, we aim to elevate awareness and empower public and private sector entities to take meaningful steps toward sustainability, developing solutions that protect their operations and strengthen their resilience against climate change.”

With better knowledge of the latest ESG trends, organizations can be better positioned to take advantage of market conditions and build a sustainable future for themselves and increase the resilience of the communities in which they operate.

“We are excited about this timely partnership between Zurich Resilience Solutions and GoImpact. Our combined strengths are complementary and form a holistic toolkit of offering on risk assessment, learning and advocacy that bridges a significant market gap, for large corporations and small medium enterprises alike,” said Helene Li, CEO and Co-Founder of GoImpact.
Hashtag: #ZurichResilienceSolutions

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

Zurich Resilience Solutions

, the risk advisory business of Zurich Insurance Group, leverages 150 years of industry experience and 75 years of risk engineering expertise to address the risk management needs of both existing and new customers. The unit offers specialized insights, tools, and solutions to help businesses tackle traditional and evolving risks, such as climate change and cybersecurity.

As a global entity, Zurich Resilience Solutions has over 950 risk experts stationed in 40 countries, bringing local expertise and industry specializations to clients worldwide. Its capabilities and solutions are available to any organization seeking a proactive approach to risk management and long-term resilience.

GoImpact Capital Partners

Bridging the great divide between the talk and action, accelerating the Sustainable Development agenda from intention to implementation – GoImpact means impact made easy and actionable.

GoImpact has established significant market footprint on its mission to drive the sustainability agenda forward, bridging the knowledge gap between talk and action. We offer the best ESG learning experience in the market, providing case-based, experiential learning courses which are crafted and delivered by a group of world-class experts in sustainable finance and ESG.

Through its partners network across Asia Pacific which includes regulators, financial institutions and large corporations, delivering online-to-offline initiatives, GoImpact connects stakeholders across sectors and provide learning and advocacy opportunities to drive real change by example for everyone who is keen to understand more about the full spectrum of Sustainability and Resilience agenda.

Adedapo Adesanya is a journalist, polymath, and connoisseur of everything art. When he is not writing, he has his nose buried in one of the many books or articles he has bookmarked or simply listening to good music with a bottle of beer or wine. He supports the greatest club in the world, Manchester United F.C.

Economy

AfDB to Give Nigerian SMEs $50m Loan Through BoI

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SMEs

By Adedapo Adesanya 

The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) through its Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa (AFAWA) programme has pledged support towards a new $50 million financing agreement to provide financial and business support to women-led enterprises in Nigeria.

The African Guarantee Fund, which implements the AFAWA Guarantee for Growth programme, and the Bank of Industry (BoI) signed the $50 million loan portfolio guarantee framework at the Africa Investment Forum in Rabat recently.

Through the AfDB AFAWA has approved more than $2.4 billion in lending for Africa’s women-led small and medium enterprises, as well as partnered with 185 financial institutions responsible for disbursing the funds across 44 African countries.

The initiative has unlocked financing for more than 18,600 women-led small and medium enterprises. AFAWA is supported by the African Development Bank’s partners and donors: the Women’s Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), G7 participating countries Canada, France, Germany and Italy as well as the Netherlands and Sweden.

The transaction will be phased out in three tranches over ten years and will significantly scale up lending from the BoI to small and medium enterprises in the country.

The new deal will support women-led businesses via the AFAWA Guarantee for Growth programme, which makes financing available for women entrepreneurs through de-risking and technical assistance measures.

“This strategic partnership illustrates the commitment of the African Development Bank, especially the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa initiative, to empower women entrepreneurs and foster economic growth in Nigeria,” Mrs Beth Dunford, African Development Bank’s Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development, told signing ceremony attendees.

“This is not just a financial transaction aimed at supporting and catalysing the growth of small and medium enterprises in Nigeria – it is a beacon of hope and progress for African businesses, particularly for those led and owned by women,” she added.

The partnership includes a comprehensive risk-sharing mechanism that focuses on supporting micro, small and medium enterprises, women-owned enterprises and “green businesses” that promote environmental sustainability and gender equity.

African Guarantee Fund Group Chief Executive Officer, Mr Jules Ngankam said, “This transaction with the leading development finance institution in Nigeria is a great milestone that will significantly impact Nigeria’s economy by unlocking up to $100 million in financing for small and medium enterprises. African Guarantee Fund will also provide tailored guarantees and technical assistance towards the special small and medium enterprise products offered by Bank of Industry that target women, youth and green businesses.”

“Bank of Industry is excited to leverage the guarantee framework of the African Guarantee Fund in promoting sustainable growth, gender equity, innovation and advancing more credit to small and medium enterprises in Nigeria in line with [Nigeria] President Bola Tinubu’s government’s Renewed Hope agenda,” said Mr Olasupo Olusi, Bank of Industry’s Managing Director and CEO.

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Economy

FX Speculators Count Losses as Naira Appreciation Exceeds Expectations

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FX Speculators

By Adedapo Adesanya

Speculators in the Nigerian foreign exchange (forex) market are counting losses with the Naira appreciating heavily against the greenback across several windows in the last few days.

The development has been tied to the new foreign exchange framework introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) recently as well as inflows from Nigerians living in the diaspora who are returning to the country for the festive season.

The apex bank had on Monday, December 2, launched the Electronic Foreign Exchange Matching System (EFEMS), an electronic platform introduced to tackle speculation and improve transparency in Nigeria’s foreign exchange market.

In a circular announcing the EFEMS platform, the apex bank explained that it facilitates spot foreign exchange transactions between the Naira and the US Dollar.

The platform, operated through Bloomberg’s BMatch system, requires a minimum trade value of $100,000, with incremental trade sizes of $50,000.

CBN also stated that the platform automatically matches buy and sell orders, promoting fairness and efficiency in FX trading.

The EFEMS system allows authorized dealers, including commercial banks, to place buy and sell orders in real time.

Transactions are automatically matched based on predetermined rules, ensuring swift execution and real-time visibility for market participants and regulators.

This has started bearing fruits with early signals indicating that speculators holding foreign currencies, particularly the US Dollar, have seen the value of their money drastically drop due to the appreciation of the local currency.

This is now forcing them to dump FX into the system and take the domestic currency alternative.

Business Post reports the Naira recorded a 3.3 per cent or N52.80 appreciation on the US Dollar in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) on Monday, December 9 to close at N1,552.50/$1 compared with the preceding session’s rate of N1,605.30/$1.

This is also seen in the parallel market with the local currency trading within a  low of N1,590 per Dollar to N1,630/$1 on Tuesday afternoon.

This newspaper also learned that many speculators are offloading their foreign currencies in panic for the local currency to avoid losses, which might ease the pressure, but there are fears that the demand for FX might happen after the holidays.

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Economy

Seplat to Double Oil Production With $800m Mobil Assets Acquisition

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seplat and exxonmobil

By Dipo Olowookere

Leading Nigerian energy company, Seplat Energy Plc, has disclosed that its acquisition of assets of Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited is expected to more than double its crude oil production to around 120,000 barrels per day.

Business Post reports that the transaction should be sealed by Thursday, December 12, 2024, with about $800 million to be pocketed by Mobil.

In 2022, Seplat deposited $128 million to Mobil for the transactions and will give the company the balance of $672 million after obtaining the approval of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). This will be paid from available cash and debt facilities, with no new equity issuance required.

In a notice to the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited on Monday, Seplat said the acquisition would provide a significant opportunity to further drive its growth and profitability, whilst contributing significantly to the Nigerian economy.

It based this projection on the fact that Mobil’s assets are of proven quality, located in one of the world’s leading hydrocarbon basins.

Seplat, which also trades its shares on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), said the assets it intends to take over from Mobil include OML 67, 68, 70 and 104.

It stated that ERC Equipoise (ERCE) prepared an independent Competent Person’s Report (CPR) on these assets and certified that, as of June 30, 2024, Mobil had 409 mmboe of 2P oil and gas reserves, after having produced 99 mmboe since January 1, 2021.

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