EXECUTIVE INSIGHT
When it comes to disclosing their carbon emissions , publicly listed companies in the US could do better .
Only 45 % currently reveal their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions , compared to 73 % of listed firms in other developed markets .
That will soon end . On 6 March 2024 , the Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC ) issued regulations that require registrants to provide climate disclosures in their annual reports and registration statements , beginning with annual reports for the year ending 31 December 2025 .
It is fair to say that there has been a mixed reaction , politically and in boardrooms .
So will it make a positive difference to carbon emissions ?
Satish Weber , Head of Sustainability , Financial Services at Capgemini , is well placed to analyse the mood in the US and the potential impact of the rule .
Q . WHAT WAS YOUR CAREER PATH AND HOW DID YOU COME TO BE IN YOUR CURRENT ROLE ?
» I ’ ve been working in financial services now for over 25 years , almost exclusively from a consulting point of view , although I did have a few years of working in industry and I grew up more on the insurance side of financial services .
I started my career a long time ago in Chicago and ended up in San Francisco doing a lot of startup work in the insurance industry around the 2000s .
“ I grew up in a unique childhood where we grew our own food , had wood burning stoves in the home , which is very unusual in America , with very sustainabilityoriented parents and family ”
At this point I ’ ve done every type of project imaginable , every function within an insurance organisation . And in the last five years I have moved more broadly into banking and capital markets . I joined Capgemini about seven and a half years ago . It ’ s gone by really fast .
The role that I was originally brought in to do at Capgemini was as a digital market development executive . What does digital mean to financial services ? What does digital mean to insurance ? Well , it means a lot of different things and you have to kind of create a matrix team from many different parts of the organisation and bring a diverse topic together into something that is cohesive .
When our new CEO Aiman Ezzat joined , sustainability was a personal passion of his , and one of the first things that he did from a Capgemini point of view was he set our own sustainability targets .
36 December 2024