OECD Review on Aligning Finance with Climate Goals 2026

Since 2000, policymakers in 111 countries (and EU institutions) have adopted over 860 financial sector policies that integrate climate considerations to manage climate risks to financial stability and uphold market integrity. Although some policies are being updated or paused, the adoption of new climate-related financial sector policies still grew by over 25% between 2023 and 2025. Transparency continues to dominate the mix (78%), while prudential measures are gaining ground (20%) and monetary policy tools remain rare (2%).

Countries across geographies adopt different playbooks of climate-related financial sector policies, placing different weights on disclosure requirements, voluntary transparency tools, stress tests and other prudential tools. In Africa and Asia-Pacific, policymakers continue to rely relatively more on transparency policies, while shares of climate-related prudential policies are higher in Europe and North America.

Low-carbon real-economy investments have increasingly outpaced fossil fuel investments, but trends in the financial sector across asset classes have yet to converge. Climate-alignment of listed equity remained relatively stable since 2022, while debt instruments have fluctuated more, improving for syndicated loans but losing momentum for bonds. Climate alignment of bank holdings increased, but many pockets of finance cannot be fully tracked yet.

Some regions are capturing opportunities of financing their climate transition through green corporate bond issuance more than others, as is the case for other major financial asset classes. Green-labelled corporate bond issuance in Africa, Europe and parts of Asia-Pacific exceed traditional corporate bonds issued by fossil fuel companies, while the opposite remains true in some other parts of Asia and the Americas. Traditional corporate bond issuance to energy and industrial sectors remain large, pointing to untapped opportunities to finance transitioning activities.