The Governor of the Bank of Ghana said on Tuesday that climate change has become a direct threat to financial stability, as Ghana moved to strengthen coordination across its financial regulators through a new Sustainable Finance Roadmap.
Speaking at the launch of the framework in Accra, the governor said climate-related shocks are increasingly affecting the financial system through asset values, credit risk and insurance liabilities, making them a core concern for financial supervision.
“Such risks do not stay in the environment alone. They travel into the financial sector through the value of assets, the cost of claims and the security of lending,” he said.
The Sustainable Finance Roadmap is aimed at aligning environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards across Ghana’s financial sector and improving coordination among regulators overseeing banking, insurance, pensions and capital markets.
The initiative is being led by the Bank of Ghana in collaboration with key financial regulators and supported by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group.
It was launched under the theme “Achieving Regulatory Convergence on ESG: Promoting a Resilient and Sustainable Future for Ghana.”
The governor said Ghana’s financial system, which is regulated across multiple institutions, requires stronger coordination to manage risks that cut across sectors.
“The risk that moves across the whole system cannot be managed by any one institution sitting alone,” he said.
He cited recent flooding events in Ghana as an example of how climate shocks are increasingly translating into financial losses and stressing traditional risk models.
The central bank said the roadmap consolidates nearly a decade of sustainability reforms, including the introduction of Sustainable Banking Principles in 2019 and a climate-related financial risk directive issued in 2024. Industry compliance has reached about 73% as of 2025.
The framework sets out three pillars, ESG integration, climate-related risk management and financing sustainability, which will guide regulatory action across the financial sector.
The governor also said sustainable finance presents not only a risk-management challenge but also an opportunity to attract global capital and finance infrastructure and energy transition projects.
“Sustainable finance is not a cost we have to carry. It is a market,” he said.
Ghana is positioning the roadmap as part of efforts to deepen access to climate finance and establish itself as a regional hub for sustainable finance.
