Climate change commitment, credit risk and the country's environmental performance: Empirical evidence from a sample of international banks

This paper analyses whether banks with a greater commitment to climate change issues, proxied by the climate change score from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), experience an impact on their credit risk and whether this relationship is moderated by the environmental performance of the country where the bank is located. For these purposes, a panel data analysis is carried out on a large sample of international listed banks over the period 2011-2019. Our findings suggest that the commitment to climate issues lowers the risk level of bank loans when banks have a medium-high level of attention to these issues. The country location of the bank does play a key role: In countries with better environmental performance, credit risk reduction takes place at lower levels of climate change commitment. This study provides important implications for the actions that bank managers, regulators and practitioners can enact.