OCBC Bank Appoints Benjamin Towell to Head Climate Action Strategies

A Brief Summary

Benjamin Towell joins OCBC Bank to lead and advise the bank and its climate action strategies after his long association with Singapore's Building & Construction Authority.

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Towell's role as vice president of sustainability entails developing a climate action strategy and roadmap for the bank and working with the bank's partners to step up the decarbonisation process.

At the Building & Construction Authority (BCA), Towell worked on Singapore's Green Market building certification scheme. He developed Green Mark 2015 and 2021, which involves construction aligned with the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals.

Towell, at BCA, also took part in the development of the Super Low Energy Building Programme, a policy for carbon reduction, and authored ' Green Book', a book for sustainable building initiatives.

Towell said: " Business is more concerned with cost than value. We need an economic system that factors in externalities, to change how businesses operate. Sustainable finance will help steer that".

“In the future, businesses will only be able to access some financial products if they have a robust climate transition plan in place.”

Towell was an architect at the start of his career, worked in the UK on several projects, including conservation heritage schemes and senior care centres design. He is a founding member of The Circle for Human Sustainability group, which brings environment professionals, sociologists and economists and works towards an economy not based on growth but "ecologically responsible behaviours".