This article was first published on iklimriskleri.com and migrated with a July 2026 update.
In Europe, the CSRD and ESRS; in Türkiye, the Türkiye Sustainability Reporting Standards (TSRS, Türkiye’s adoption of IFRS S2) issued by the KGK and the BDDK climate risk guide that took effect on July 1, 2025: sustainable finance is no longer about “good intentions” — it is a strategic imperative. So what can we learn from the international banks leading this transformation? The climate targets and methodologies of Nordea Group, one of Scandinavia’s largest financial institutions, offer a concrete example for the Turkish banking sector.
What is Nordea doing, and what is the Turkish equivalent?
Nordea has placed sustainability at the center of its business strategy: more than 50% emission reduction in its own operations by 2030, PCAF-aligned financed emissions accounting (Scope 3 Category 15), and Board-approved ESG risk limits. ESG risk factors are handled through traditional prudential risk categories such as credit risk, market risk, operational risk, and business model risk, while embedding ESG in employee compensation plans spreads this culture across the organization. The table below maps the five building blocks of the approach to their regulatory counterparts in Türkiye:
| Building block | Nordea practice | Counterpart in Türkiye |
|---|---|---|
| Net-zero target | Net zero by 2050 at the latest; 2030 interim targets: more than 50% in operations, 40-50% in the loan portfolio vs. 2019 | Climate targets and metrics disclosed under TSRS 2 at a level of detail similar to ESRS E1 |
| Financed emissions | PCAF Global GHG Standard: attribution factor × borrower’s emissions; covers loans, real estate, vehicles, investments, and sovereign bonds | Building the Scope 3 calculation infrastructure for TSRS reports |
| Data quality | PCAF score: 1.0 (most accurate) to 5.0 (most uncertain); data challenges in SME and mortgage lending are acknowledged and managed | The same data gaps are on Turkish banks’ agenda as well |
| Taxonomy / green ratio | GAR disclosure under the EU Taxonomy; cannot be reported because more than 78% of the corporate loan book is SMEs | The YVO (green asset ratio) Communiqué (April 2025): reporting to the BDDK starting with June 30, 2025 figures |
| Risk integration | ESG Risk Appetite Framework (RAF), KRIs, annual climate stress tests, ESG embedded in compensation | The BDDK guide: stress tests and İSEDES integration, scenario analyses |
Türkiye’s timeline: from expectation to binding rule
TSRS aims to increase transparency in sustainability reporting and provide comparable information for investors and stakeholders — and that is no longer a theoretical expectation. After the KGK extended the deadline to October 31, 2025, the first TSRS reports were published in the fall of 2025; the first wave of reporters includes banks such as VakıfBank, Yapı Kredi, Halkbank, and TEB. Although the KGK doubled the reporting thresholds in January 2026, banks remain in scope regardless of size — and 2026 is the year reports meet limited assurance audits.
The BDDK guide published on March 13, 2025 explicitly expects climate risks to be identified and measured, and material ones to be integrated into stress tests and İSEDES (the Turkish ICAAP) along with short-, medium-, and long-term scenario analyses; Nordea’s annual climate stress tests and ESG Risk Appetite Framework are exactly what that expectation looks like in practice. Türkiye does not yet run a centralized climate stress test like the EU’s — the burden sits inside banks’ internal processes, and the compliance gap keeps widening for institutions without climate data and scenario infrastructure.
Nordea’s data lesson is just as clear: the biggest challenge in financed emissions accounting is data quality and access — especially for SMEs and mortgages, a global problem. Nordea’s experience with the EU Taxonomy and GAR, SME data gaps included, is practically a preview of the difficulties Turkish banks will face in their YVO calculations. Combining sector- and country-level estimation with PCAF data quality scoring makes the gap manageable; we follow the same principle in UrClimate Next when analyzing loan portfolios location by location: behind every score there is a traceable source and a documented methodology. In the long run, strategies to improve the quality of customer data should be a shared agenda for the sector.
Conclusion
Sustainable finance is no longer an “add-on” to banking; it is a core component of the business model, risk management, and growth strategy. The experience of global front-runners like Nordea offers an inspiring template for adapting to the new norms shaped by TSRS, the BDDK guide, and YVO reporting. What matters on this journey is understanding global best practice, strengthening the data infrastructure, and integrating targets through concrete, measurable steps. We take a detailed look at the needs of institutions that want to quantify the impact of physical and transition risks on their loan portfolios in our solutions for the banking sector — this is not merely a compliance exercise, but a strategic move that shapes future financial stability and competitiveness.
