Banking for Tomorrow — Sustainable Lending at Banque Méridienne Crédit

A four-round, intermediate sustainable-finance and credit-risk simulation set inside Banque Méridienne Crédit (BMC), a mid-sized French commercial bank in Lyon with EUR 38bn in assets and a EUR 14.2bn corporate/SME loan book. On 14 September 2026 the ECB's supervisory arm rules BMC's climate-risk disclosures 'materially inconsistent' with its book: 31% of H1 'sustainable-labelled' loans fail the bank's own taxonomy — potential greenwashing in regulatory reporting. The book's weighted ESG score sits at 58/100 against a binding 70 Charter target, green/transition origination at 24% against a 40% 2027 commitment, and two legacy 'transition' borrowers (logistics + textiles, EUR 145M exposure) have seen blended PD jump from 1.2% to 3.8%. If the ECB confirms weak ESG-risk governance it can impose a Pillar 2 add-on of +0.4pp CET1 — EUR 95M of tied-up lending capacity. Playing the Credit Committee, you (1) diagnose the book — recompute the corrected ESG score after stripping mislabelled loans, locate where default risk is concentrated, and size the mandate gap and capital add-on exposure; (2) work the live deck of eight loan applications, deciding approve / decline / approve-with-conditions and setting a risk-based price (base + credit spread + a sustainability adjustment within ±60 bps) while keeping new origination at or above the EUR 100M floor; (3) defend the re-screened book to the ECB, the CFO and an NGO Charter partner and pick a workout path for the EUR 145M at risk; and (4) set the 2027 roadmap — redesign Relationship-Manager incentives so volume and sustainability are jointly rewarded, set governance guardrails the ESG screen cannot bypass, and project the path from 58 to 70 and 24% to 40%. The math rewards genuine transition finance, risk-based and sustainability-adjusted pricing, conditions over binary rejection, and active credit-risk management — and punishes the five classic errors: margin tunnel vision, exclusion mistaken for responsibility, labelling without verification, flat pricing, and freezing the book. Final KPIs track Portfolio ESG Score, Green/Transition Origination %, Return on RWA and the CET1 Capital Buffer against the ECB add-on.