Corporate

The Natural Capital Lab Financial Sector Pilot

Overview

In the summer of 2017, the Natural Capital Lab sent out a call for applications for Canadian companies in the financial services sector interested in piloting the Natural Capital Protocol. The Protocol is a framework designed by the Natural Capital Coalition to help generate trusted, credible, and actionable information for business managers to inform decisions. Understanding natural capital offers a range of benefits for financial institutions including a competitive advantage, potential new investment streams and/or insurance products, among other things.

The objective of the NCL pilot project was to support participating financial sector partners to pilot the ‘framing’ and ‘scoping’ stages of the Natural Capital Protocol (NCP). This included engaging in a series of dialogues and working sessions to follow the steps outlined in the Protocol and Financial Sector Supplement (FSS) all in an effort to understand specific natural capital accounting challenges and opportunities. A cohort of 10 NCL Innovators participated in the working sessions to provide their expertise and guide the process. The pilot was lead by NCL workstream leads, Geneva Claesson and Robyn Seetal from Deloitte’s Sustainability and Climate Change practice.

Following the recruitment period, Manulife was selected as the financial services organization to complete the pilot. The pilot ran between June – October 2017 with a final presentation delivered at the Natural Capital Lab’s Innovation Summit in October 2017.

Manulife’s objective in conducting a natural capital assessment was to build internal knowledge and understanding of natural capital, allowing for key decision-makers at Manulife to understand the degree to which the organization relies on natural capital. We thank Manulife for their involvement in this innovative pilot project.