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The search for sustainable skills is growing among professionals in Brazil's financial sector
Source: Your Job, by LinkedIn News | Report: Joao Jose Oliveira | Edition: Guilherme Odri e Akash Kaura
Concern about the environmental impact of economic activity has gained relevance in Brazil's financial sector. On the one hand, clients in the banking, investment and credit markets are increasingly looking for institutions and companies that are aligned with environmental, social and governance (ESG) sustainability policies.
On the other hand, in response to this growing demand, regulatory bodies and representative entities are building normative references to organize rules that define the standards for implementing, monitoring and publicizing these initiatives.
This situation is creating a growing search in the Brazilian market for professionals whose profile includes sustainable competencies, or green skills, These are also known in the market as green skills.
In Brazil, as in other parts of the world, the financial sector is not among the economic activities with the highest indicators of sustainable competencies among its professionals, but it has stood out for showing a more accelerated growth of these attributions in the universe of workers.
This is what the Global Green Skills Report of 2023, drawn up by LinkedIn.
Sustainable skills in the market
All of these processes - growing demand from clients for businesses concerned with minimizing environmental impact, regulation of these initiatives and the emergence of vacancies to meet these processes - are occurring simultaneously in Brazil.
For this reason, there is still a shortage of workers who have entered the job market with a career profile focused on these green skills, say experts who spoke to LinkedIn News for this article.
It is for this reason that vacancies for these profiles are expected to continue to be hot in the Brazilian financial market.
Among the most sought-after skills in the financial market are competencies that can handle tasks and processes, such as:
- Environmental Management Systems,
- EHS (Environment, Health and Safety),
- Environmental auditing,
- Sustainability Reports,
- Leed (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design),
- Carbon Footprint Reports,
- Life Cycle Assessment, Radiation Safety,
- EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment).
Companies' solution to filling this gap has been to look for people with a hybrid background, in which professionals add these new skills to their original training.
Financial sector behind the curve
On the global stage, the Global Green Skills Report reveals that the average percentage of professionals with green skills in all sectors is around 12.3% - or one in eight workers have these sustainable skills - while in the financial sector, this share drops to 6.84%, or one in 15 workers.
In Brazil, the average percentage of professionals with so-called green skills is 5.92%, compared to an average rate of 13% in the Brazilian economy, an indicator pushed up by the agricultural industry (39,07%), construction (38,86%) and oil and gas (16,45%).
According to experts, one of the main reasons why the financial sector is lagging behind in terms of vacancies and hiring professionals with green skills is the fact that the sector has a business model with lower direct environmental impacts than those caused by other sectors such as oil, gas and mining, construction or agriculture.
But the financial sector has picked up the pace in the search for these professionals. The presence of sustainable skills grew by 15% worldwide in 2022, more than the average rate of advance of 12.3% found among workers in the economy as a whole.
And in terms of the share of hiring professionals on the global stage for positions that require green skills in finance, it increased worldwide by 11.6% from 2021 to 2022.
In the Brazilian market, the scenario is similar. The growth in demand for these attributes among professionals in the financial sector reached 12.39%, compared to a rate of 11.4% for the economy as a whole.
Within the financial sector in Brazil, the share of vacancies requiring sustainable skills in the total number of vacancies doubled from 2021 to 2022, rising from 0.44% to 0.89% of the total number of advertised positions.
Since 2016, the average annual growth rate of vacancies requiring green skills in the Brazilian financial sector has been 14.61%, which is higher than the world average rate of 6.59% in the global financial sector.
Market demands
That's why regulatory bodies and entities in the financial sector are moving.
The CVM (Securities and Exchange Commission), the regulator of the Brazilian capital markets, for example, has included in the New Regulatory Framework for Investment Funds standards for the use of terms related to sustainable finance in the designation of funds whose investment policies seek to generate environmental benefits.
As for Anbima (Brazilian Association of Financial and Capital Market Entities) launched a guide to guide financial institutions in the public offering of fixed-income securities related to ESG criteria.
And the Central Bank, which regulates financial institutions, has launched a public consultation normative proposal establishing rules for the disclosure of information on social, environmental and climate risks by the institutions of the National Financial System (SFN).
According to experts, this movement is important because the definition of clear rules and taxonomy are factors that can accelerate the hiring of professionals with green skills in the financial sector, since they create greater legal certainty and transparency for these processes.
In Brazil, the relative penetration rate of environmentally sustainable skills in the finance sector stood at 1.63 points, 7th in a list of 15 countries - the highest rate being Singapore (4.94) and the lowest Canada, with 0.25, according to the Global Green Skills Report.
This rate measures the average number of sustainable skills held by professionals in the sector, taking an average from the number of skills each worker has.
