"We met Carolien when we were out and about pitching our TNFD and nature support work, and swiftly realised they didn’t need us at all! Instead, we want to share with you what the Oxbury team have been forging ahead on and some of the lessons Carolien has learned in the process. Enjoy!"
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We are always excited to chat with Carolien Samson who heads up sustainable banking at Oxbury, the first UK bank set up to be dedicated to serving the rural community.
With farmers and agricultural businesses as key clients, Carolien and her team are very close to the natural world and are one of the first banks we’ve seen to align fully with TNFD.
We met Carolien when we were out and about pitching our TNFD and nature support work, and swiftly realised they didn’t need us at all! Instead, we want to share with you what the Oxbury team have been forging ahead on and some of the lessons Carolien has learned in the process. Enjoy!
Tell us all about Oxbury, what you do and why?
"Oxbury was founded in 2019 to provide financing to the UK agricultural sector and rural economy. We received our full banking licence at the beginning of 2021 and started operations in February 2021. To date, more than £1.5 billion in deposits has been raised and over £800 million in loans provided to farmers and other role players in the food and beverage supply chain. Climate risk was incorporated in our lending criteria since inception and we released our first TCFD Report at the end of 2022. I joined Oxbury in May 2022 as part of our sustainability team with a significant focus on natural capital."
We’re so impressed with your natural capital work.
Tell us what the process was like to work towards TNFD reporting as an early adopter.
"As a finance institution focused on agriculture, nature is fundamental to our business. It was therefore a very logical decision for us to become an early adopter and to recognise that climate and nature risk are interdependent. We started with a gap analysis a year before our Natural Capital Report was published which identified actions we needed to take before any reporting could be done.
We rewrote our climate policy to create an overarching natural capital policy which now covers climate, water, soil and biodiversity and updated all our governance policies to reflect the expanded mandate at board, executive and senior management level.
We then conducted a detailed assessment of risks, opportunities, impacts and dependencies across both our own operations as well as the key sub-sectors where we operate.
As we progressed with this work, we became familiar with the terminology and the pre-work became the outline of our report. We released our first combined nature and climate risk report in 2023, before the TNFD framework was completed, and used the available framework at the time to report on governance, risks and strategy. That allowed us to deepen our understanding on our customer exposure which we then included in our 2023 Natural Capital Report."
What can other businesses do to get started on TNFD?
What tools are out there to help?
"It is very easy to get distracted by the seemingly endless number of tools and platforms out there. A basic map that shows the location of your operations is a minimum requirement. In our 2022 report, this was just a simple map of the United Kingdom. In 2023 we progressed to a version which showed the location of our largest loan exposures. TNFD’s guidance is very good. Guidance on the Identification and Assessment of Nature-related Issues: The TNFD LEAP approach is a very effective step-by-step guide and identifies tools and resources for each action.
ENCORE is a free tool that allows you to do a high-level assessment of the impacts and drivers of the specific sector in which your company operates. I found that Capitals Coalition’s Natural Capital Protocol is a useful supporting document in conjunction with ENCORE.
Your company’s carbon footprint is another underestimated tool for disclosure of metrics especially core indicators. We use the same assumptions for water consumption and waste, for instance, which provides comparability between our climate and nature metrics. You will have to use some judgement to decide which indicators are meaningful within the context of your operations. If you are in a large corporate with operations across multiple jurisdictions, country-level data may be the most appropriate. In our case, we try to get regional or even site-specific data as our operations are only in the United Kingdom."
Were there any trade-offs or difficult decisions that had to be made, or key stakeholders that needed to be drawn in? How did you approach that?
"We are at the very beginning of nature reporting and had to recognise that this will be a process with no clear or near-term end point. It has meant that our focus needs to be on incremental progress and experimentation rather than producing a single report. That is difficult for perfectionists who want to provide the one correct answer!
As an early adopter, we are finding that we have a lot of freedom to test and assess what actions and which indicators actually provide decision-useful information. When we can show the wider company how the sustainability information supports credit decisions or investor demands, it becomes embedded in the overall business strategy which is our main objective."
At Oxbury, the sustainability team sits next to and works closely with the sales team. Can you tell us about that, and how the business thinks about sustainability as opportunity?
"The food and beverage supply chains are much further along in requiring carbon footprints from their suppliers and requiring general compliance with animal welfare and labour regulations than many others.
Collecting the data and evidence can sometimes feel like a burden to our customers and part of our role is to support them to use the sustainability data that they collect to make management decisions and access financial products.
We believe that customers who engage in farming practices like improving soil health and water infiltration will be more resilient in future and therefore be a lower financing risk over the long term."
We know that collaboration and speaking with others in the industry is paramount to moving towards our goals.
Can you share a partnership or joint project that has significantly influenced your approach to sustainability, and what have been the key takeaways?
"In our 2023 Natural Capital Report we describe a case study where we established the overall carbon footprint of a farm including carbon stored. This is an important area for the food and beverage supply chain that has to set net zero targets, but the data is often collected piecemeal and seldom at overall farm level. We collaborated with different service providers and collated the various data points to provide a whole farm result which all of the partners can use to develop customer offerings.
The case study illustrates the importance of sharing information between different role players to create a larger picture and improve an overall customer value proposition which none of us would be able to do individually.
I have always been a believer in kleptomania in sustainability reporting – see what others are doing, study the examples and then adapt them to your own circumstances and needs. That requires many sustainability professionals to have the courage to publish work in progress and be open to input, but it strengthens the quality of disclosure."
For you, what is the next big thing in sustainability?
What emerging trends or technologies are you most excited about, and how do you see these influencing your industry over the next 5 to 10 years?
"Integrated transition plans driving integrated reporting which combines financial and sustainability information to provide real insights to stakeholders."
Looking forward, what do you see as the biggest opportunity for organisations that are willing to take bold steps in sustainability?
"Consumers are becoming very discerning regarding sustainability claims made by businesses. Companies that are able to truly integrate sustainability within their business processes and strategy will be able to respond more effectively to this trend and avoid reputational damage."
Enjoyed this conversation? Let's talk.
We're looking to discuss all things TNFD, TCFD and sustainability in our Ever Spotlight newsletter so get in touch to book in a chat with Martha and be featured in our next edition.