An advocate for the advancement of technology across financial services within Westminster, Lord Holmes will set the tone for the event, which seeks to enable positive change through innovation and collaboration. Lord Holmes is a respected contributor to the Finextra community, and will no doubt impart his fierce belief in pursuing tangible change - starting from the top down.

Speaking on his selection as keynote, Lord Holmes stated: “Delighted to be giving the keynote at the SustainableFinance.LIVE conference later this month. The focus on bringing industry leaders together to share innovative technologies, de-carbonisation strategies and general approaches to ESG couldn’t be more timely. We are at a point in time when we should be thinking of ESG not merely as to do with environmental, social and corporate governance but as existential, seismic and global.”

“It is absolutely essential that we prioritise sustainable finance and, whilst we all welcome initiatives such as HSBC and BMO Financial Group investing millions in Bill Gates’ decarbonisation efforts through the Breakthrough Energy Catalyst programme and the Ethereum ‘merge’, switching from a ‘proof of work’ to ‘proof of stake’ consensus method saving 99% of CO2 emissions, we also know there is much more to be done.”

One initiative Lord Holmes is particularly excited about is the Electronic Trade Documents Bill going through UK parliament at the moment.

“This is the most important bill you have never heard of - it will permit the digitisation of trade documents bringing significant benefits to the UK trade industry on security, efficiency, cost and environmental impact. Estimates from the World Economic Forum is that this has the potential to reduce global carbon emissions from logistics by as much as 10-12%.”

Registration for the conference and hackathon is now open, you can find out more information about the event here.