Fidelity Bank Ghana has underscored its commitment to integrating climate adaptation into its core lending strategy, highlighting its role in private capital mobilisation for a climate-resilient future.
Atta Yeboah Gyan, Deputy Managing Director, Operations and Support Functions at Fidelity Bank, shared the bank’s innovative approach during a panel discussion at the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program Partnership Forum at the Alisa Hotel in Ghana.
It was under the theme “Unlocking growth through climate resilience and private sector leadership.”
“At Fidelity Bank Ghana, we consider climate adaptation a strategic imperative — not only as a risk management issue, but also a value creation opportunity,” Mr. Gyan stated, setting the tone for his remarks.
He elaborated on the bank’s proactive stance, explaining, “We have identified climate risk as a critical ESG material topic through our double materiality assessment, integrated into our environmental and social governance processes.”
This commitment is further solidified by a robust Environmental and Social Management System (ESMS), meticulously aligned with IFC Performance Standards and the Bank of Ghana’s Sustainable Banking Principles.
“To effectively manage both physical and transition climate risks,” Mr. Gyan continued, “we recently conducted our first portfolio-level climate scenario analysis across our Retail and Corporate & Investment Banking (CIB) segments.”
This comprehensive assessment, which also included an internal analysis of potential climate-related disruptions to the bank’s branches and ATMs, has directly informed the creation of detailed climate risk heatmaps, significantly enhancing the bank’s understanding of exposure and reinforcing long-term resilience.
The bank’s three-year Climate Implementation Plan, aligned with Ghana’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), further solidifies this vision, ensuring that its financing supports national climate adaptation priorities.
Fidelity Bank is intentionally embedding climate risk screening into its credit assessments, with a particular focus on vulnerable sectors such as agriculture, infrastructure, and SMEs.
Mr. Gyan provided concrete examples: “Across our portfolio, especially agriculture, we’re piloting tools to assess drought and flood vulnerability to extrapolate potential impacts, risks, and opportunities for our clients within set industries.”
He also highlighted the importance of human capital in this endeavour.
“We’re also training our frontline staff to recognise and respond to adaptation indicators — especially important in markets where adaptation solutions are not easily visible or monetised.”
Beyond internal risk management, Fidelity Bank is actively working to unlock private finance for adaptation and resilience across Ghana.
He proudly detailed these initiatives: “We’ve launched an Electric Vehicle (EV) Financing product to promote green transport, and asset finance products to help schools and hospitals integrate solar energy into their energy mix, reducing their exposure to energy disruptions.”
He emphasised the bank’s holistic approach, stating, “Through our Bridge-in-Agriculture initiative, we’ve supported over 12,000 new jobs and empowered over 20,000 smallholder farmers, with over 60% being women — proving that adaptation can be inclusive and bankable.”
Mr. Gyan firmly believes that “blended finance is critical. Working with development partners, we can deploy concessional capital or guarantees to de-risk climate-smart investments and expand lending to underserved but climate-vulnerable segments.”
Looking ahead, Fidelity Bank put forth concrete recommendations for the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and other stakeholders.
He urged them to “support technical capacity-building for commercial banks to integrate climate risk tools into credit scoring models,” “facilitate de-risking instruments (e.g., guarantees, first-loss capital) to increase commercial bank appetite for adaptation finance,” “co-develop pipelines of bankable adaptation projects — particularly in agriculture and local infrastructure,” and “promote standardized climate risk data, especially localized physical risk maps, to improve decision-making across the banking sector.”
Mr. Atta Yeboah Gyan concluded with a powerful call to action: “Adaptation is not only essential for resilience — it is also bankable when paired with the right partnerships, products, and policies. Fidelity Bank is proud to be leading on this front in Ghana, and we look forward to working with various stakeholders present and the Global Center on Adaptation and others to scale our collective impact.”