just under two years we have expanded to almost 50 members. 48 to be precise as of today. and not only central banks and supervisors, but also international and standard - setting bodies like the basel committee on banking supervision and imf are on board as observer. as are the world bank, the oecd, the bis. last month, the ny state department for financial services joined, and this week iosco. the network now spans five continents, representing half of global greenhouse gas emissions and with responsibility for supervising over three quarters of the global systemically important banks and two thirds of systemically important insurers. so we have a collective leverage that is incredibly powerful. what the network does? our mission is very clear : to exchange experiences, share best practices, contribute to the development of environmental and climate risk management in the financial sector and to mobilize mainstream finance to support the transition toward a sustainable economy. it ’ s been less than two years since we laid the first stones of the ngfs. but in that time the network has grown from strength to strength. a year ago we published a first progress report in which ngfs members acknowledged that climaterelated risks are a source of financial risk and with that, it falls squarely within their existing mandates to work on this. the second big milestone was the report “ a call for action ” which we published last april. we issued recommendations to provide all central banks, supervisors and the financial community with deliverable goals that will help to ensure a smooth transition to a low - carbon economy. our first – core - recommendation is to integrate the monitoring of climate - related financial risks into day - to - day supervisory work, financial stability monitoring and board risk management. supervisors are encouraged to integrate climate related risks in their supervisory framework and assess strategic resilience of their firms to climate change policy. firms are encouraged to take a long - term, strategic approach to the consideration of these risks and to embed them into their business - as - usual governance and risk - management frameworks. fout! onbekende naam voor documenteigenschap. second, lead by example, specifically central banks are encouraged to integrate sustainability into their own portfolio management. this is about practicing what we preach and we already took action. two weeks ago during the annual meetings in dc we published a guide on integrating sustainable responsible investment in portfolio management. other recommendations are on the data gaps and capacity building. we need to collaborate to bridge the data

a driver for financial risks. next to the physical risk that climate change is causing, there is also a transition risk channel. fout! onbekende naam voor documenteigenschap. as governments have prime responsibility for climate policy, not all but many of them all over the world are developing new regulations to transition to a low - carbon economy. have financial institutions properly priced in all the effects of new rules and regulations? financial institutions have significant exposures to companies that emit high levels of co2. financial institutions such as pension funds and banks, are vulnerable to their carbon - intensive assets suffering a sudden loss in value. here again, risks are already unfolding. a good example is dutch legislation in the real estate sector. from 2023 onwards, office properties in the netherlands will be required to have an energy efficiency label of at least c, resulting in stranded assets, in the form of those offices with an energy label lower than c. policies like this prompt institutions to hold a mirror up to themselves, to take stock of the assets they hold and how their value will be affected by future climate policies. to us, in the netherlands, in europe, and many other places around the world, facts like these have made us consider that climaterelated financial risks and their drivers are of primary concern for central banks and supervisors alike. this might seem trivial to you now, especially after the presentation and discussions we heard today. but it has not been an easy road, connecting the dots between finance and climate change. we all felt this was a thing worth doing. yet this was not an easy thing. it was not easy to convince our colleagues that climate change was a word that central bankers should even have in their vocabulary. it was not easy to convince our banking supervisors that they should discuss climate related risks with the banks under their supervision. it was not easy to persuade our european colleagues to include climate risk in the ecb ’ s risk map. it was not easy to hammer home the fact that climate risks are also very real financial risks. and look where we are now. a large group of central banks in the world have woken up to the need to align finance with sustainability. here i stand as the first chair of the central banks ’ and supervisors network for greening the financial system. the ngfs. we started as a small scale initiative of the banque de france with eight central banks, five from europe and other members from china, singapore and mexico. in