OCBC's shift from offshore exposure to sustainable financing no less challenging

WITH the recent slashing of OCBC's exposure to the offshore support vessels (OSV) sector, the question is whether the bank's plan to rev up its sustainable finance portfolio will be able to make up for the gap.

Analysts said that while it is clear that sustainable finance is on an upward trajectory, it comes with its own set of challenges and should not be looked upon as a "replacement" to offset the decline of the OSV sector.

For a start, OCBC's sustainable finance portfolio already exceeds its loans to the OSV sector. The bank surpassed its earlier S$10 billion target for sustainable finance by 2022 two years early in the first quarter of 2020. As of the first half of 2020, it accounts for 5 per cent of OCBC's total loan portfolio.