Revolutionary digital platform to boost green finance

PRESS RELEASE – 20 January 2017 – the 'Green Digital Finance Alliance', a ground-breaking initiative to harness digital technologies in catalyzing financing that addresses global environmental challenges, was launched today at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland by its two founders, Ant Financial Services Group (Ant Financial), China's leading online and mobile financial services provider, and UN Environment.

Financing sustainable development is one of the greatest challenge of our times. To meet this challenge will require ambition, innovation, and commitment, underpinned by effective collaboration. Digital finance can drive environmental risks, opportunities, incentives and choices into the decision-making across the financing value chain. The Green Digital Finance Alliance is committed to driving forward such changes through market innovation, collaborative action and increased public's awareness of sustainable development and green lifestyle choices.

"The Green Digital Finance Alliance is a unique partnership ensuring that we can align tomorrow's fintech-powered global financial system with sustainable development. UN Environment is honoured to partner with Ant Financial in making green finance an integral part of the daily life of every individual and business", said Erik Solheim, Executive Director of UN Environment.

One such innovation is Ant Financials' app which provides its users with a carbon account alongside their credit and saving accounts. Ant's 450 million users in China are now able to benchmark their carbon footprint, generated through algorithms of their financial transaction history, and to earn 'green energy' credits for reducing their footprint. Ant Financial has integrated this into a social media experience as well as committing to a complementary, tree-planting carbon offset program. As of today, 72 million users are participating in the app.

The number of people that signed up yesterday alone was nearly the equivalent of the population of Switzerland. Every day tens of millions of users go to their Ant Forest to grow their virtual trees while reducing carbon emissions.

"Ant Financial is a strong believer in green finance. Several of our products and services have been contributing to sustainable development. Leveraging mobile Internet, cloud computing and big data, we can encourage our hundreds of millions of users to participate in a green lifestyle," said Eric Jing, Chief Executive Officer of Ant Financial.

The Alliance as a global partnership will include innovative digital finance businesses and active stakeholders in accelerating such innovations and scaling their international deployment.

Additional Quotes:

"The Green Digital Finance Alliance is a unique partnership ensuring that we can align tomorrow's fintech-powered global financial system with sustainable development."

Erik Solheim, Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, Head, UN Environment

"ANT believes that tomorrow's financial system should help value and manage our common environmental assets. We hope that the Green Digital Finance Alliance will contribute to shaping and accelerating this development. "

Eric Jing, CEO, Ant Financial Services Group

"UN Women is deeply committed to addressing the gender gap in access to finance in order to ensure that new financial solutions benefit women and men equally in support of sustainable development. UN Women welcomes the Green Digital Finance Alliance, and looks forward to supporting this new initiative."

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngucka, Executive Director, UN Women

"Getting finance at the right price to the right people at the right time will be critical in both securing clean energy access for all and meeting the climate change challenge. Digital finance can be a powerful tool for unlocking barriers to investment and empowering people to meet the challenge and seize the opportunity of clean, affordable future. This Alliance will I hope help to catalyze finance so that we transform lives, create jobs, clean air, provide energy, and restore landscapes at the speed and scale needed."

Rachel Kyte, CEO, Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL)

About the Green Digital Finance Alliance

The Green Digital Finance Alliance was launched by ANT Financial and UN Environment on 19 January 2017, in Davos during the World Economic Forum. It has been created to address the potential for fintech-powered business innovations to reshape the financial system in ways that better align it with the needs of environmental sustainability. At its core, the Alliance's members will comprise innovative financial institutions committed to using digital technology to advance green finance in lending, investment, and insurance. To ensure success, the Alliance will draw in allies from across the worlds of environment and finance, who, through their expertise, insights and networks can contribute to collaborative actions with timely and scaled potential.

About Ant Financial

Ant Financial Services Group is focused on serving small and medium enterprises as well as individuals. With the vision "bring small and beautiful changes to the world," Ant Financial is dedicated to building an open ecosystem of Internet thinking and technologies while working with other financial institutions to support the future financial needs of society. Businesses operated by Ant Financial Services Group include Alipay, Ant Fortune, Zhima Credit and MYbank.

About UN Environment

UN Environment is the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda, and promotes the environmental dimension of sustainable development within the United Nations system. It has been engaged in sustainable finance since 1992 through its UNEP FinanceInitiative and more recently through the ground-breaking work of its UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System.