ECB Sanctions Crédit Agricole Over Climate Risk Monitoring Delay

This is a first for the French banking sector. The European Central Bank (ECB) announced on Friday February 13 that it had imposed penalties of 7.551 million euros on Crédit Agricole, for non-compliance with its obligations in terms of assessing risks linked to the climate and the environment.

These penalties, which the ECB wishes to distinguish from the “sanctions” strictly speaking that it can impose on financial institutions in the event of non-compliance with the rules imposed on them, cover a delay of 75 days noted in the communication to the Frankfurt institution of the results of the bank’s assessment of the risks concerned. The ECB explains that “Crédit agricole did not sufficiently assess the materiality of its climate and environmental risks before maturity” which had been set for 2024.

Crédit Agricole took note of the ECB’s decision while expressing its ” incomprehension “ with regard to a penalty that he judges “purely administrative” and adds that “responding to the ECB at the requested level of granularity required heavy work which, despite the strong mobilization of the teams, could not be finalized within the required time”. The group ensures “that it naturally identifies and takes into account climate and environmental risks in its models”. For its part, the NGO Reclaim Finance welcomed a “good signal” which according to her shows that the ECB “takes climate risks seriously and that banks can no longer ignore them”.

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