On March 2, Postal Savings Bank of China (hereinafter referred to as PSBC), PSBC Wealth Management Co., Ltd, Deutsche Boerse AG (hereinafter referred to as Deutsche Boerse) and its index company Qontigo jointly held the PSBC Green Finance Forum and the PSBC ESG (environmental, social and governance) Index (hereinafter referred to as the Index) press conference in Beijing. The Index, with its full name as STOXX® PSBC China A ESG, jointly released by PSBC and Deutsche Boerse, will promote the high-quality development of China’s ESG market. Liu Jianjun, Vice President of China Post Group and President of PSBC, attended the event. Xu Xueming, Vice President of PSBC, Li Wenhong, Director of Beijing Local Financial Supervision and Administration, and Zhu Tong, General Manager and President of Deutsche Bank China delivered speeches on the spot. Katrin Otto, head of China Market Development at Deutsche Boerse and Member of the Executive Board of China Europe International Exchange, delivered an online speech.

Release of the Index is an innovative measure for China’s and Germany’s financial institutions to combine their powers and leverage each other’s strengths to jointly help build a new ecosystem for high-quality development of the capital market and promote sustainable development. Aiming at facilitating  decision-making on ESG investment, the Index will provide global investors with a more comprehensive and scientific reference through selecting constituent stocks from “STOXX® China A 900 Index” and deciding the weighting of constituent stocks by comprehensively considering metrics including stock turnover rate and liquidity. Through backtesting of the past performance of the Index, its long-term return performance and risk characteristics are significantly better than performance of the stock market. The Index was released on Deutsche Boerse, which provides a reference for domestic and foreign investors to understand China’s A-share market.

Xu Xueming said in his speech, along with the fast development of ESG investment, how to build an objective and quantitative evaluation system which both satisfies the needs of international investors and reflects characteristics of China’s development has become a major task faced by domestic institutions, especially financial institutions. The Index will provide domestic and international investors with observational dimensions and investment tools targeted at the ESG performance and long-term investment value of A-share companies, which will help guide all sides to lay more emphasis on corporate ESG management and practice and jointly promote high-quality development of the ESG market in China.

Li Wenhong said, joint release of the Index by PSBC and Deutsche Boerse will help provide global investors with a comprehensive, balanced and standard reference system, facilitating investors to have a more accurate understanding of the situation of China's A-share market and produce positive effects on activating green finance market and further perfecting the green financial system.

Katrin Otto said, the development of ESG investment in China benefits both China and the world. Deutsche Boerse was very pleased to launch the Index in cooperation with PSBC. The Index has not only adopted the international index compilation method, but also taken into account the localized index system of China, combining the advanced indexation method with China’s ESG database to provide investors with innovative investment schemes. She expected to further deepen cooperation between the two sides and jointly help build an honest and efficient ESG market in China.

In the round-table session, experts, scholars and business representatives focused on the opportunities and challenges brought by the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals and discussed the development of green finance around the theme of Green Inclusive Finance: Development Trends of Green Financial Products in China and Germany.