Rebalancing sustainability, purpose and profit

Having spent most of my life living and working in Australia, the extreme weather events experienced across the country in recent years provide a stark reminder of the climate emergency we all face.

It is partly for this reason that I am strong believer in the need for business leaders to respond to our changing environment by adopting goals that balance short term financial returns with sustainability and purpose.

Climate change and the environment is of course only one challenge that we must collectively address – others include the many inequalities that exist within our societies across race, gender, income and access to education. The need for change is being increasingly recognized and many companies across the world are now acknowledging the role they can and, more importantly, need to play in relation to wider social goals – and that strategies that focus on goals beyond financial returns, such as sustainability and inclusion, can actually enhance shareholder returns. Indeed, only 7% of Fortune 500 CEOs believe their companies should “mainly focus on making profits and not be distracted by social goals” ¹.

One organisation, and a partner of Visa, leading the way in the pursuit of balancing purpose and profit is Tomorrow – a German-based neobank that ‘combines the comfort of mobile banking with true sustainability’. Tomorrow invests their customers’ deposits into sustainable projects such as clean energy and sustainable housing while also allowing customers to offset their personal C0² emissions.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with one of Tomorrow’s co-founders, Inas Nureldin, to learn more about Tomorrow and to discuss how the financial services industry can play an incredibly important role to balance purpose and profit.

To watch our conversation, click on the play button at the top of this page.