The highlight of this year’s Annual General Meeting of the Financial Centres for Sustainability (FC4S) on September 26 in Dublin was the signing of the Gender Finance Charter, enthusiastically supported by the host country in the person of the Irish Minister of State for Financial Services, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill. Michael Schmidt represented the Cluster, which is a long-standing member of this global network of financial centers for the promotion of the SDGs and the Paris climate goals. The charter, supported by 21 initial signatories, aims to promote gender equality in the financial sector through ten concrete actions in each financial centre. The Gender Working Group established by the FC4S will provide more detailed guidance for implementation. The Cluster sponsors unanimously endorsed the signing of the Gender Finance Charter, as it reflects their own diverse gender equality efforts, most of which are embedded in a broader agenda of diversity, equality and inclusion.

In addition, the 35 financial centers gathered in Dublin found it valuable to exchange views on the changing geopolitical environment and the respective projects of the individual locations. It became clear that many topics of importance to our Cluster are also important in other financial centres, such as enabling transformation, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, energy efficiency of real estate, biodiversity and, last but not least, “capacity building” with knowledge transfer and research.

The FC4S leadership also reported on the initial results of the progress programme (Assessment Programme 2023) based on the surveys conducted in the summer in the individual financial centres. The overall results will be published in a Global Report at a later date.