By Simon Jessop
LONDON (Reuters) -The banking industry's main group leading the sector's global effort to cut carbon emissions plans to overhaul its structure, it said on Wednesday, after the high-profile exit of many of its largest members.
The Net-Zero Banking Alliance, set up in 2021 ahead of global climate talks in Glasgow, has proposed changing from being a "membership-based alliance" to a "framework initiative".
Membership obligations have included making a commitment to reach net-zero emissions
by 2050, setting interim emission-reduction targets for carbon-intensive sectors by 2030, and annual progress reports.
Members will vote on the proposed change to the alliance's status by the end of September.
Many large banks left the group after pressure from some U.S. Republican politicians who said membership could be regarded as a breach of antitrust rules.
Swiss lender UBS became the latest to leave earlier in August, shortly after UK peers Barclays and HSBC and several months after the largest U.S., Canadian, Australian and Japanese banks.
In a statement on its website, the NZBA said its steering group believed the proposed model was the best way to continue supporting banks to remain resilient and accelerate "the real economy transition" in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
It said it would allow continued "engagement with the global banking industry to develop further guidance and tools needed to support them and their clients".
Lucie Pinson, director of non-profit Reclaim Finance, said the changes were a way for the NZBA to avoid "the embarrassment of losing relevance as its largest members gradually withdraw".
"For those working to protect the environment and the climate, this underlines once again the limits of voluntary corporate commitments and the urgent need for binding measures, including strong regulatory action, to trigger real change," she said.
(Reporting by Simon Jessop; Editing by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes and Barbara Lewis)
