Finance teams are increasingly the ones asked to put a number on climate risk, green investment and ESG performance — often without a framework built for the job. This training course from the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy gives finance managers that framework, connecting sustainable finance principles directly to the budgeting, reporting and investment decisions they already own.

Attendees work through ESG criteria, green investment appraisal and climate-related financial risk using case studies drawn from current financial systems, then apply what they learn to real reporting and strategy questions. The course closes by unpacking how leading organisations are reinventing their business models to stay ahead on responsible finance, and what that shift means for a finance function specifically.

Why Finance Teams Need This

• ESG questions increasingly land on the finance function's desk, but few finance managers have a structured way to answer them.
• The course pairs sustainable finance theory with the accounting, investment appraisal and risk tools finance teams already use daily.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the aims and principles underlying sustainable finance.
• Identify the key environmental, social and governance issues relevant to financial strategy.
• Recognise how ESG factors reshape business and financial strategy.
• Build meaningful sustainable finance reporting tools.
• Create financial models that assess sustainable finance and related risks.

Target Audience

• Financial reporting and strategy team members.
• Risk management professionals.
• Finance managers and budget managers.
• Commercial managers.
• Capital investment and project team members.

Module 1: The Risk Case for Sustainable Finance

• Traditional vs sustainable-finance approaches to business risk
• Sustainable finance developments in banking and financial investment
• Financial modelling of risk under sustainable finance conditions

Module 2: Mapping the ESG Issues That Matter to Finance

• Environmental, social, governance and ethical issues finance teams must track
• Defining organisational scope for sustainable finance

Module 3: Strategic Management for a Sustainable Business

• Stakeholder value and the purpose of competitive companies
• Corporate governance principles and redefining competitive strategy
• Business model disruption, key success factors and strategy maps

Module 4: Investment Decisions Under Sustainability Constraints

• Challenges and scenarios for sustainable investment and business model reinvention
• Traditional investment appraisal tools and their limitations
• Factoring environmental and social dimensions into investment decisions

Module 5: Accounting, Reporting and the Way Forward

• The traditional financial analysis toolkit versus sustainable finance measures
• Selecting key performance measures and designing internal sustainability reports
• Principles of Integrated Reporting (IR) and the way forward in sustainable finance