FC4S adds new members and elects two new co-chairs at 2020 AGM

Casablanca/Geneva/Toronto – Today, the UN-backed International Network of Financial Centres for Sustainability (FC4S) continued its rapid expansion by adding new members in North and South America. The network also elected two new Co-chairs, with Jennifer Reynolds, President and CEO of Toronto Finance International (TFI) and Lamia Merzouki, Deputy General Manager at Casablanca Finance City taking over.

Ms. Reynolds 20-year career in the financial services industry has included senior roles in investment banking, venture capital, and global risk management. Prior to joining TFI, Ms. Reynolds was the President & CEO of Women in Capital Markets (WCM), Canada’s largest industry association and advocacy group for women in the financial sector. Ms. Reynolds also currently sits on the Advisory Board for Canada’s Institute for Sustainable Finance.

Ms. Merzouki has been the Deputy General Manager of Casablanca Finance City Authority since its launch in 2010. She started her career at Arthur Andersen in Paris before returning to Morocco where she was Head of strategy and corporate finance in both public and private sector entities from AKWA Group (one of the biggest conglomerates in Morocco) to the Ministry of Agriculture as well as the Souss Massa Draa Region. Ms. Merzouki is an executive coach, Vice-Chairman of the Women Working For Change network as well as Co-lead of the Africa CEO Network.

“I am honored to be taking on the Co-Chair role for FC4S and I look forward to working with our members to accelerate the shift to sustainable finance. Financial centres have a critical role to play  in the achievement of the Paris Agreement and the SDGs and FC4S is facilitating vital global collaboration and action to achieve our collective goals,” said Jennifer Reynolds, President & CEO of Toronto Finance International.

“I am honored that Morocco will be representing the African continent as a Co-Chair for the FC4S for the upcoming two years.  I hope this will contribute to accelerate the transition to sustainable forms of finance on the continent, a transition that is all the more urgent given the impact of the Covid pandemic,” said Lamia Merzouki, Deputy General Manager of Casablanca Finance City Authority

“We here at FC4S are delighted to welcome Ms. Lamia Merzouki and Ms. Jennifer Reynolds as our new Co-chairs for our upcoming two-year cycle. Together they bring decades of experience and collectively have their fingers on the pulse of the sustainable finance landscape,” said Stephen Nolan, Managing Director FC4S.

Mr Nolan added, “We have also been extraordinarily privileged to have worked with Mr. Kong Wei, Convener, Shanghai Lujiazui Financial City Council Green Finance Development Committee and Mr. Pierre Ducret, Special Advisor to the Chairman of Finance for Tomorrow. As Co-chairs they have helped FC4S more than double its membership to point where we now have a network of financial centres that account for $75 trillion in equity market capitalization.”

The three sessions of the virtual AGM were hosted virtually by Finance for Tomorrow after the in -person meeting in Paris was cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. At the meeting, FC4S members updated the secretariat of their work across the last year while also feeding into the development of the 2021 work plan. Two new voices were added to the mix with Rio de Janeiro, and Montreal joining the FC4S network in October.

The Laboratory of Financial Innovation (LAB) is a project of the Brazilian Development Association (ABDE), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). It works as a multi-sectoral discussion forum and its purpose is to promote dialogue between the public and private sectors and to share experience among various agents of the economy.

Finance Montreal, Quebec’s national cluster, was created in 2010 by institutions in the financial services industry at the invitation of the Québec Government. Its mission is to develop and promote Quebec’s financial services industry though consultation and mobilization in order to make Quebec a competitive, attractive and innovative financial centre.

Despite COVID-19, FC4S has issued four reports this year of which one was the first analysis of the pandemic through the lens of sustainable finance. Other global reports included the world first analysis of the complex array of relationships of sustainable finance partnerships while highlighting how the sustainable finance ecosystem can better work together to achieve the global development goals of the next decade. FC4S will also launch a pan-European report on the state of sustainable finance skills as well as the most advanced version of its assessment programme (AP).

The objective of the AP is to provide FC4S members with a level of alignment, labelled from 0 to 5 on their proprietary Sustainable Finance Scale (SFS) which assesses the progress of the green and sustainable finance agenda within member centres, the degree of capital provision in supporting low-carbon transition, alignment to the Paris Agreement and the achievement of the UN SDGs.