Finance
Groups Call On Financial Institutions to Stop Financing Major Driver of Climate Change – Center for International Environmental Law
Amidst mounting risks, policy guide urges financial institutions to exit the petrochemical industry
WASHINGTON, Oct 15, 2024 — Petrochemicals pose significant and growing risks to human health and the climate, according to a new report urging financial institutions to stop financing the petrochemical sector.
Exiting Petrochemicals: A Policy Guide for Financial Institution warns that continuing to fund the production of petrochemicals, including plastics, will not only lock in decades of emissions but could result in hundreds of billions of stranded assets.
Written by the Center for International Environmental Law, Break Free from Plastics, Friends of the Earth, and the Texas Campaign for the Environment and endorsed by more than 70 organizations, the guide outlines the mounting physical, legal, market, and social risks of investing in the petrochemical sector and calls on financial institutions to stop funding petrochemical production and exit the supply chain responsibly.
The report findings reinforce the need for the plastics treaty negotiations to deliver legally binding measures by the end of negotiations to control the expansion of plastic production and substantially reduce it, including as an important regulatory measure to prevent investment losses and risks.
“The petrochemical industry and its toxic products pose an urgent threat to human health and the global climate. Following unprecedented hurricanes and the hottest summer on record, the United States now faces the potential buildout of 120 new petrochemical facilities and expansions, which will only exacerbate these threats,” said Brandon Marks, Petrochemicals Finance Campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law, “Regulatory, legal, reputational, and financial risks are rapidly mounting for the petrochemical sector, including oversupplied and unproven markets for plastics and ammonia. Choosing to finance and insure these projects is not just irresponsible; it’s a poor investment. Banks, insurers, and investors must stop financing petrochemicals now.”
“The communities most impacted by these developments, often low-income and communities of color, bear the brunt of pollution and health risks. We must hold financial institutions accountable for their role in financing these harmful projects,” said Sharon Lavigne, Founder and Executive Director at RISE St. James. “It’s time to stop funding environmental racism and start investing in a cleaner, safer future for everyone.”
“Given the terrible damage that I have seen corporations like Formosa Plastics do to communities, workers, fisheries, bays, and fishermen, the line has to be drawn: No more funding for plastics and petrochemicals!” said Diane Wilson, Executive Director of the San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper and fourth-generation fisherwoman.
“Plastics have long been associated with ocean pollution, but it’s clear now they pollute absolutely everything,” said Paloma Henriques, Senior Petrochemicals Campaigner at Friends of the Earth, “Plastics and the 16,000 chemicals used to make them contaminate food, water, air, blood, and even breastmilk. The petrochemical industry poses an existential threat to public health, biodiversity, and climate stability. With a pending global plastics treaty and increasing national and local regulations, the financial sector has both a moral obligation and a fiduciary duty to responsibly exit the petrochemical industry.”
“Much of the infrastructure required for the expansion of the petrochemical industry is being proposed in working class and communities of color in the Gulf South and the Ohio River Valley, areas which are already overburdened with toxic industrial pollution,” said Matthew Kennedy, Petrochemical Campaign Coordinator at Texas Campaign for the Environment. “We are demanding that financial institutions stop perpetuating this environmental racism by phasing out financing of the petrochemical sector.”
Media Contact:
Lindsey Jurca at press@ciel.org or +1 (202) 489-4769
TORONTO — Insurance provider Intact Financial Corp. says it had higher catastrophe losses and large losses in the second quarter than it initially expected.
Intact Financial reported that its combined catastrophe and large losses were $247 million above its expectations for the second quarter on a pre-tax and net of reinsurance basis.
The combined higher losses amount to $1.08 per diluted common share after tax.
Total catastrophe losses reached $416 million on a pre-tax basis during the second quarter and net of reinsurance.
The company says catastrophe losses in Canada were due to weather events, while commercial fires drove losses in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Intact Financial says the increase in large losses included higher-frequency fire claims as well as other property losses across different geographies.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 8, 2026.
Companies in this story: (TSX: IFC)
The Canadian Press
For a company navigating one of the most consequential transformations in its history, financial clarity is not optional—it is essential. Natura &Co, the Brazilian personal care and cosmetics group behind iconic brands such as Natura and Avon, has long been committed to combining purpose-driven business with commercial performance. After a period of strategic portfolio reshaping, including the divestiture of its Aesop and The Body Shop holdings, the company is now sharpening its focus on profitability and operational excellence across Latin America and global markets.
At the center of that effort sits a deceptively complex challenge: understanding, in real time, which revenue and cost factors are driving or eroding gross margin across a highly diversified business. For years, answering that question meant manual reporting, delayed insights, and finance teams spending valuable time on data gathering rather than analysis.
That’s now changing, thanks to a co-innovation initiative developed together with SAP and Numen, a global SAP partner specializing in digital transformation and enterprise software implementation.
From manual reporting to proactive decision intelligence
The project’s goal was to replace a labor-intensive gross margin analysis process with a generative AI application embedded directly into Natura &Co’s financial workflows. Built on SAP Business AI Platform, SAP’s unified foundation integrating business technology, data, and AI capabilities, the application connects directly to data in SAP S/4HANA to provide finance teams with automated insights and narrative recommendations in real time, without the need for manual data pulls or offline reporting.
The application enables users to explore revenue, cost, and margin drivers interactively, identifying at a glance which elements are protecting or eroding margin performance across markets and product lines. Crucially, human oversight remains central to the design: the AI application generates insights, while finance professionals retain full control over interpretation and decisions.
“The implementation of gross margin analysis using AI in SAP S/4HANA marked an inflection point in the analytical capability of our finance area,” said Rogério Dias Garcia, tech manager, ERP Latam, Natura &Co. “We overcame delays and raised the standard of insights by integrating margin analysis from SAP S/4HANA with a large language model connected via the SAP AI Core layer. This architecture allowed us to provide, in an agile, secure, and completely anonymous manner, a stratified and precise view of gross margin offenders and protectors—discriminating exactly which revenue or cost elements were driving market performance.”
A collaborative architecture for scalable AI adoption
Natura &Co’s application derived from a prototype SAP partner Numen created in early 2024 at SAP’s global Hack2Build on business AI, leveraging the generative AI capabilities of SAP Business AI Platform. The solution was designed and developed through close collaboration between Natura &Co, Numen, and SAP. From the outset, the approach was to align AI adoption with concrete business priorities, ensuring the application would be scalable and production-ready rather than a standalone prototype.
Numen brought deep SAP implementation expertise to the project, combining knowledge of SAP S/4HANA architecture with hands-on experience in building solutions on SAP Business AI Platform. The technology stack—SAP S/4HANA, SAP AI Core, SAP Fiori, and SAP Business Technology Platform—provided the secure, integrated foundation needed to connect financial data with generative AI capabilities in an enterprise context.
“SAP enabled the transformation by providing the technological foundation and expert support,” said Carlos Aravechia, head of Data Design & Intelligence at Numen.
The success of the project has validated a broader conviction at Natura &Co: that generative AI, embedded directly in ERP workflows, can fundamentally reposition finance from a transactional function to a strategic business partner.
A blueprint for other businesses
The Natura &Co project demonstrates a pattern that other organizations can replicate, particularly those running SAP S/4HANA. The combination of structured ERP data with the contextual reasoning capabilities of large language models creates a foundation for decision intelligence that goes well beyond traditional business intelligence tools.
The project was built within a six-month co-innovation sprint and went live in August 2025. It is currently in use across Natura &Co’s Equador operations.
Looking ahead, Natura &Co is already planning the next phase: integrating Joule Agents to further automate the extraction of standard analytical content and deepen the AI-driven optimization of financial processes.
“The success of this initiative validates the transformative potential of embedded AI within our ERP,” Dias Garcia noted. “We are now ready to move forward—deepening these insights and integrating the capability of Joule Agents to maximize the extraction of standard content and further optimize our business decisions.”
For SAP customers evaluating how to move from AI experimentation to AI in production, the Natura &Co project offers a concrete, replicable model: start with a high-value, well-defined business process, embed AI directly into existing workflows, and build in human oversight from the start.
A girl from a disadvantaged rural family in central China topped this year’s gaokao, attracting numerous live-streamers eager to finance her education, which she declined.
The home of 18-year-old secondary school graduate Han Yaping in a Henan province village was recently bustling with live-streamers.
This attention came after Han achieved an impressive score of 699 out of 750 in the gaokao, China’s national college entrance exam.
She has received offers from China’s two leading universities, Tsinghua University and Peking University.
Han’s accomplishment is particularly remarkable given her family’s impoverished circumstances.
Her mother suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory arthritis affecting the spine, preventing her from working. Her father, who earns a living through farming and odd jobs, serves as the family’s sole provider. Han also has a younger sister.
-
Rhode Island1 minute agoHandshake Initiative instills confidence, motivation in students
-
South-Carolina6 minutes agoESPN recruiting writers break down five-star Josh Dobson’s fit with South Carolina
-
South Dakota13 minutes agoSouth Dakota man faces abuse charges after authorities called to NW Iowa casino
-
Tennessee16 minutes agoData centers driving up Tennessee power bills, report finds
-
Texas21 minutes agoFamily demands investigation after US man killed by ICE agent in Texas
-
Utah28 minutes agoTurn your miles into meals
-
Vermont31 minutes agoPoll: Most young Vermonters say they’re likely to leave state amid affordability concerns – VTDigger
-
Virginia36 minutes agoMEOC Organization hosts annual summer picnic for Southwest Virginia seniors
