From risk to opportunity: ESG strategy at Banco de Bogotá

What it is about

A webinar organized by the Club’s ESG Risk Working Group on how environmental, social and governance risks have stopped being only a compliance issue and become an enabler of strategy, innovation and value creation in the financial sector. Marcela Villegas Conde, Vice President of Risk and Compliance at Banco de Bogotá, shares the institution’s journey and the lessons learned in integrating ESG into integrated risk management.

The session walks through frameworks and practices for moving from risk to opportunity: the evolution of SARAS, the incorporation of climate risk and nature-related risks (TNFD), the Net Zero strategy, and the role of sustainable funding (thematic bonds, performance-linked loans) in driving the green and social portfolio. It also discusses recent regulatory guidelines in Colombia (Circular Externa 015 of 2025) and reflections on incentives, internal adoption and client maturity.

Session summary

The speaker, who leads risk and compliance at Banco de Bogotá, describes how the bank moved from treating environmental, social and governance risks as a compliance matter to building them into its strategy. Sustainability sits among the corporate objectives alongside growth and profitability, with green and social portfolio targets, a sustainability committee at board level and clear roles for credit, finance, risk, treasury and audit. She summarizes the evolution of the environmental and social risk management system since 2019, the addition of climate risk (transition and physical) and, more recently, nature-related risks, along with the new circular from Colombia’s financial regulator.

She shows how that framework turned into a business opportunity: financing of solar energy, electric fleets, water treatment and the circular economy, funding through thematic bond issues supported by multilateral lenders, and financial education at the base of the pyramid. Among the lessons she stresses involving the commercial areas from the start, making the topic a priority at senior management level and staying flexible; among the challenges, capturing client information. The questions covered how to integrate these risks without duplicating functions, which data add value, the technical capacity of the teams, how to treat a client that does not meet the requirements, thresholds by client size and how to assess an institution’s maturity.

Topics covered

• Environmental, social and governance criteria in corporate strategy
• Sustainability governance: board, committees and three lines of defense
• Evolution of the environmental and social risk management system
• From climate risk to nature-related risk
• Green and social financing opportunities, and sustainable funding
• Lessons and challenges: data, commercial areas and senior management
• Questions: useful data, technical profiles, thresholds and client maturity