Vice President, Asia Sustainable Finance

Position title: Vice President, Asia Sustainable Finance
Reports to: Head, Asia Sustainable Finance

**Mission of the WWF Asia Sustainable Finance Team**:
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is one of the world’s largest and most experienced conservation organisations with a global network of 6000 experts working across the areas most critical to global sustainable development, including food systems, climate and energy, and freshwater, forests and oceans, active in more than 100 countries. Our approach is deeply rooted in science and our mission is to stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment and to build a future in which people and nature thrive. WWF has identified the finance sector as a key driver of global economic activity with which we must engage to successfully deliver on our long-term conservation mission.

Positioned at the cutting-edge of sustainable finance internationally, our global sustainable finance team of 80 experts - including 30 in Asia - is dedicated to supporting the finance sector to transition to sustainable and resilient economy via working key finance sector players including banks, investors, regulators, and stock exchanges, across six focus areas:
**Regulations and Guidelines**:We provide recommendations and facilitate dialogue between regulatory authorities and financial institutions (FIs) to issue harmonised regulations and guidelines that raise the bar for sustainable finance at the national and regional level.

**Standards**:We help FIs understand what makes certain standards and certification schemes credible to help them ensure that their due diligence and verification processes assure robust sustainability practices.

**Capacity Building**:We empower FIs through capacity building on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues through industry-wide workshops and bilateral training sessions. Our training covers a range of sectors and thematic focus areas and helps FIs to better assess and price risk, value companies, and develop new products.

**Research & Tools**:We conduct research, develop best practice guides, and benchmark FIs’ progress on ESG integration to ensure timely progress towards a resilient and sustainable financial system. We also help FIs to understand and implement cutting-edge tools so they can better understand, measure, and manage evolving ESG risks and opportunities.

**Engagement**:We help investors exert their influence and facilitate large scale, meaningful change by providing research and analysis that supports their engagement with portfolio companies over key ESG issues.

**Green Financial Solutions**:We work with FIs to support the development of innovative green financial solutions based on science-based criteria that create measurable environmental and social impacts alongside competitive financial returns.

In Asia, we work across seven (6) ASEAN countries - Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam - as well as in Japan, South Korea and India. We focus on sustainability issues related to soft commodities finance (e.g. agriculture, forestry, and seafood), in addition to cross-cutting issues such as climate and energy, water and biodiversity within the energy and infrastructure sectors.

In this role, the Vice President will have a specific focus on strategy development and stakeholder engagement in major Asian financial centres. He/she will also oversee the sustainable banking assessment (SUSBA) analysis and collaborate with the regulation, investment and technical content development teams to amplify the banking team’s work.

**Major Duties and Responsibilities**:
Stakeholder engagement and relationship management (internal and external)
- Seek out, establish and nurture strategic relationships with senior representatives of key finance sector stakeholders in the region and where relevant, globally, to secure future opportunities for collaboration and capacity building
- Understand the varying interests and priorities of different finance sector stakeholders, including banks, stock exchanges, regulators, investors (asset owners, asset managers), government ministries, etc. and adjust engagement strategy accordingly to maximise effectiveness
- Where beneficial, forge internal and external partnerships and develop platforms that contribute to the goals of WWF’s Global Finance Practice
- Work closely with other WWF national offices in the region to 1) deliver guidance on and co-execute country-specific financial sector engagement strategies and 2) ensure that Finance practice activities contribute to other WWF goals and strategies
- Establish own reputation as an expert and WWF as a leading organisation in sustainable finance in coverage countries

Influence and foster the development of the finance sector’s strategies, policies and/or regulations (in collaboration with the regulations team) on sustainable finance
- Identify and create opportunities for WWF to work with key banks, inv