Standard Chartered and Ant Group agreed to enhance their partnership in driving green and inclusive finance, global fund management and sustainable development

London-based international financial conglomerate Standard Chartered has entered an agreement with the Chinese financial giant Ant Group to jointly contribute to tackling global issues such as climate change and ocean protection.

The two companies started their cooperation in 2017 and now aim to deepen the partnership. Standard Chartered is currently one of the joint-mandated lead arrangers and book-runners of Ant Group’s sustainability-linked syndicated loan. The British banking group has also cooperated with Ant in sustainable deposits, digital innovation of global fund management, and inclusive finance for SMEs.

As cooperation expands, Standard Chartered will also support Ant Group in building a global liquidity and foreign exchange management structure. Besides, the partners will further strengthen their collaboration in ESG, digital innovation and inclusive finance.

Both sides aim to utilize their expertise in digital technology, green finance and inclusive finance to increase their joint contributions to global sustainable development.

Last month, Chinese fintech giant Ant Group announced that, with the help of green computing technologies, it managed to reduce corporate carbon emissions by over 62,100 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) in 2022, reaching operational carbon neutrality for the second consecutive year.

Besides, the fintech behemoth spent 20.46 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) on research and development (R&D) in 2022, doubling the relevant expenditure from 2019. The investments focused on innovations in key operational areas such as distributed databases and computing infrastructure, blockchain, privacy computing, data and network security, green computing, and artificial intelligence.

Pursuing its ESG goals, Ant Group also collaborated with its affiliate MYbank to establish the first nationwide green rating standard for SMEs in China. The Ant subsidiary provided green loans to 420,000 SMEs, enabling the borrowers to reach their sustainability goals.