Jordan Allen Walters, Unsplash
2024: Above Board: Banks' Seafood Sector Policy Analysis
WWF – World Wildlife Fund Fisheries & Aquaculture
During the second half of 2024, WWF conducted a third annual assessment of 40 banks’ seafood-related policies and disclosures to understand how they are, or are not, effectively implementing the tools at their disposal—such as sector policies, due diligence processes, and sustainable finance products—to manage, minimize and eliminate risks as well as maximize opportunities related to the sustainability and resilience of their seafood portfolios. This report highlights key findings from our 2024 assessment, compares the results against last year’s findings to monitor progress, provides actionable recommendations for banks, and directs readers to practical resources to guide next steps.
Overall, this year's results show that during 2024, 19 banks—(48% of those assessed)—demonstrated some improvements against last year’s baseline. Of these, five banks (13%) improved specifically on seafood-related “client expectations” indicators and six banks (15%) disclosed new information about seafood-related eligibility criteria for sustainable finance frameworks and/or issued new blue-labeled products supporting sustainable seafood. While encouraging, more progress is still needed to ensure that banks’ policies sufficiently prevent and/or manage their exposure to these risks.
This year's report also sought to quantify the potential impact of observed policy improvements. In early 2025, WWF commissioned Profundo to analyze the seafood-related financing of eight banks documented to have updated or published new seafood-related sector and environmental and social risk management (ESRM) policies since the start of this benchmarking assessment in 2023. This research indicates that these eight banks have committed at least US $27 B in finance to 29 major seafood companies during just the past five years, comprising approximately 20% of all identified finance to these companies. As these new and enhanced policies come into effect, their potential to drive real improvements to the way companies manage impacts and risks in the water is significant.
Read the full report here.
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