Meet the expert: Viktor Sonebäck on treasury’s sustainable shift

Viktor Sonebäck

Position: Associate Director

Units: Sustainable Finance Advisory and Nordea Thematics

What do you do in Nordea, and how does it affect the transition to a sustainable society?

I am part of the Sustainable Finance Advisory and Thematics teams within Nordea’s Large Corporates & Institutions division. Within that capacity, I work primarily with research in a client-facing way. A lot of time goes into building the knowledge base we have on sustainability and sustainable finance. I’m focused on researching different angles, which often stem from our client dialogues, and presenting the findings to our clients. 

Are there any areas or hot topics clients are particularly interested in right now?

When it comes to sustainable financing, we often get questions from clients about the products available and how they can use them. They often want to know what these products mean for the company’s financials and business as well as how they are viewed by investors on both the equity and bond side. We try to investigate these and other questions and have the research findings so we can be a valuable speaking partner for our clients. 

What’s the best part of your job?

One part of what we do is to connect with industry leaders to showcase what companies are doing when it comes to sustainability. This is often in the form of interviews that we publish on Nordea.com or in our Nordea On Your Mind reports. For example, our next issue coming out in November will focus on the energy transition. We turn to industry leaders, CFOs, academics and policymakers to expand our knowledge base. These discussions with clients and other experts are some of the most interesting and enlightening and definitely my favourite part of the job.

For years, you’ve been involved in conducting Nordea’s annual Treasury Survey. This year, you decided to devote a good chunk of the survey to the theme of sustainability. Why?

Each year, we interview treasurers and CFOs from around 150 Nordic large corporates. We try to include questions we feel are the most relevant, given the current trends. This year, it felt quite natural to dedicate a large section of the survey to sustainability. We’ve seen a big focus on sustainability from the operational side at companies, especially here in the Nordics. In recent years, we’ve seen the same trend translating to the finance side. As a result, we wanted to do some benchmarking, to get a good look at what treasuries are doing. For example, how much of their funding is within sustainable products, and how much do they expect to be in the future? What are the main reasons treasuries do or don’t use sustainable financing?

And what were your key takeaways from the survey?

Almost 60% of these 150 Nordic corporates have some kind of sustainable financing today. When we ask if they expect to by 2030, the figure jumps to over 80%. They expect significant growth in the use of sustainable financing. We also wanted to dig a bit deeper to find out what’s driving this trend. We sometimes hear from treasuries that sustainable financing products require too much extra work compared to the small potential cost savings. We can sympathise with that. But the survey results show that the cost savings aren’t the point. Rather, the top reasons companies give for using sustainable financing are to support their sustainability narrative, expand their investor universe and secure access to future funding. An increasing share of capital is being earmarked for sustainable investments these days. Companies want to make sure those funding sources remain open and available to them.

Did anything surprise you in the survey results when it comes to sustainability?

We expected there to be a strong focus and conviction that sustainability is here to stay. But we were surprised to see that the momentum continues to build. You could expect that the focus on sustainability would level out at some point. You may have heard talk of regulatory fatigue or an ESG backlash. But we see that is clearly not the case. Companies are even more convinced now than they were before, and the focus on sustainability is only growing.

What’s a sustainability-related book, podcast or documentary that you think everyone should check out?

It’s not solely about sustainability, but a podcast I find extremely fascinating is Sean Carroll’s Mindscape. Carroll is a theoretical physicist who invites thought leaders for conversations about a wide variety of areas, such as politics, math, philosophy as well as economics and sustainability. These are some of the world’s most interesting thinkers at the top of their fields, doing cutting-edge work. You finish an episode smarter than when you started it.