You are the UK’s largest private bank to become a B Corporation. What inspired you to take that step?

Five years ago when we were thinking about our ESG investing, we asked ourselves: should we set up a new set of green funds alongside our existing funds, or should we put ESG filters through all of our funds? Our conclusion was that all of our funds should be green, not just a subset of them. So it started there. Then we questioned how we would hold ourselves accountable. We knew about B Lab because several of our clients are B Corps. At first, we thought it was mainly for smaller businesses and that perhaps it would be a bridge too far. But as we got into the business impact assessment, we realised it was possible.

How has the process of becoming a B Corp impacted your relationship with clients?

The process broadened our view about what the path to net zero actually meant. Previously, we’d been focused only on our funds, but we quickly began to consider our impact across other areas of our company.

Pre-Covid, we had a wonderful event that David Attenborough attended. He said that one of his greatest skills was his ability to communicate: to harness the power of holding people’s attention in a room. That was a lightning bolt moment for me – I realised that it’s not about us. We have to keep the house in order, but actually, the leverage is found in the clients in the room. So we want to encourage as many of our 20,000 entrepreneurs to join us on the journey of becoming a B Corp.

When people think of Coutts, they tend to think of the history, the inherited wealth and the fact that we are over 300 years old and the eighth oldest bank in the world. And we are all of that, but we’re also a lot more: modern, contemporary, relevant – and now, a B Corp.

You were one of many business leaders to attend COP for the first time last year. What was your experience of the conference from a finance perspective?

I think the penny has dropped for business that the cost of inaction is now greater than the cost of action. Business was finally in the room. I think that’s due in no small part to the convening power of His Royal Highness Prince of Wales through his Sustainable Markets Initiative. At that event, I was one of five very senior people in commerce and banking – none of whom had been to a COP before.

John Kerry, also at the event, had been to most COPs and said he felt all COPs had been failures except for Paris 2015 and Glasgow 2021. Paris because of the Agreement, and Glasgow because business was there.

There was also a network effect. When you’re in the room with your peers, all talking about the same thing, you leave thinking: this is what the best people in the world are saying needs to be done.

Regulators and governments have got a role to play to set the rules and to have transparency. But then the private sector, and particularly the finance sector, needs to play a role in funding the green transition.

Prince Charles said that the road to net zero is like the Marshall Plan, which was the rebuilding plan after the second world war.

It was a wake-up call for me; infrastructure must be rebuilt, and the funding has to come from somewhere. Banks, asset managers, insurance, pension funds – they all need to get on board.

But redesigning infrastructure on a global scale is only half of the issue. The other 50% is going to come from SmAs. The hair-dresser, the butcher – all those businesses on the high street are going to have to change the way that they operate as well.

People recognise that this is systemic and that everyone has a role to play; governments and regulators are not going to be enough. There’s a broad consensus in the business community that businesses now need to lead this. We need to recognise that thinking it’s a government problem isn’t an option anymore.