Sustainability & ESG · Sustainable Finance

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.

4 rounds MBA & Masters

Preview

About this simulation

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.

Who it is for

An intermediate simulation for participants who already know the core concepts of the subject, designed for master's and MBA programmes.

How a session runs

  1. The instructor creates a session from the Eureka dashboard and invites the participants.
  2. Participants play 4 rounds. In each one they submit their decisions and the simulation calculates the results.
  3. The instructor follows each participant's progress and results from the dashboard, and uses the class results for the debrief.

Decisions participants make

The decisions participants make during the simulation:

  • How do you re-screen the EUR 2.1bn of labelled originations?
  • Where do you focus the committee's first attention?
  • How rigorously do you document verification evidence for each label? (%)
  • €60M cement plant — high current emissions, credible electrification plan (transition case)
  • €12M single-use-plastics packager — highly profitable, fails ESG screening
  • €25M community solar cooperative — strong ESG, thin margins, modest collateral
  • €40M agri-processor — established, profitable, weak governance disclosure
  • Sustainability pricing adjustment on approved loans (basis points, ±60)
  • To the ECB: how do you present the re-screened book?
  • To the CFO: how do you justify your pricing?

What participants track

What participants follow on screen as the rounds go by:

  • Your Credit Committee Decisions
  • Mandate & Return Trajectory

Subjects covered

Designed for courses in Sustainable Finance.

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