The conviction era of sustainability: Why courage and clarity are more important than ever

“Sustainability has moved from the margins to the core of our strategy, but the real test is whether it’s woven into the fabric of our systems.”

That reflection set the tone at our September roundtable with senior financial services leaders. It captured the journey that many in the room recognised: how far the sector has come, and how far it still must go.

Each decade has redefined sustainability in financial services. It has moved from charitable footnote to risk framework to strategic fundamental. Now the sector is entering the conviction era of sustainability, where leadership is defined not by compliance, but by courage.

As one participant highlighted, sustainability leadership today demands conviction as much as capability. Customers, regulators, and investors now ask not just what organisations do, but why they do it, and how.

This article distils the key insights from that discussion, asking what bold sustainability leadership looks like in practice, and how financial services organisations can make purpose central to performance. Two companion pieces will explore related themes: how the sector can engage customers and communities as true partners, and how its efforts dovetail with the broader economy-wide push towards net zero.

That cultural evolution, from fragmented initiatives to integrated leadership, is where our story begins.

When asked what single cultural shift would most enable bold sustainability leadership, our panellists converged on one central idea: financial services organisations need to integrate sustainability into their core, aligning bottom-up enthusiasm with top-down conviction.

“Financial services is such a broad industry," said the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation's Janet Torney. “We are risk takers and risk assessors, and each of us plays a different part within it. But we have not yet moved fully from strategy through to the core.” Closing that gap is where the hard work starts, and where leadership matters most.

Achieving alignment means uniting legacy systems, competing priorities, and diverse stakeholder expectations without losing momentum. It also forces real trade-offs. A super fund, for instance, must honour its fiduciary duty to members while responding to growing expectations for social and environmental impact. It’s not about balancing those pressures evenly but about making – and owning – the decisions that align most closely with purpose.

It’s tempting to stay in motion, adding initiatives and frameworks. Activity feels like progress. But boldness means clarity over activity: the courage to decide what matters most and let the rest wait.

The discussion moved quickly from culture to execution. The panel identified four areas where leadership quality determines whether firms lead or lag. Each feels familiar – materiality, accountability, transparency, and risk appetite – but in the conviction era of sustainability, what separates the bold from the cautious is how these are lived day to day.

Bold leadership starts with focus. Every organisation must choose what matters most to customers, stakeholders, and long-term value, and commit its resources there with discipline.

It is tempting to pursue every sustainability goal at once: decarbonisation, diversity, governance, social impact. But breadth can breed mediocrity. As Siobhan Toohill, Sustainability Advisor and Non-Executive Director, put it: “If you try to tick every box, you’ll do everything okay but not particularly well. Choose a few things and do them exceptionally well to mobilise the organisation, and create substantive impact.”

Leaders who prioritise well and embed those priorities across the organisation turn sustainability from a side project into a whole-of-business endeavour.

Clarity of ownership stops ambition from drifting. Sustainability cannot be the responsibility of a single function or team. It is a whole-of-organisation effort. Procurement, finance, product design, customer teams and risk all play critical roles.

Bold leaders make accountability visible. They hard-wire it into governance, set expectations at the line level, and treat sustainability as transformation, empowering every team to create change rather than waiting for the sustainability function to drive it.

But without defined accountability at the line level, momentum stalls. When accountability is both distributed and visible, everyone knows how their decisions contribute to the organisation’s purpose. That’s when momentum builds.

Trust grows when organisations tell the full story, both the wins and the work still to do.

The panel reflected on the fine line between greenwashing (overstating achievements in the sustainability space) and greenhushing (understating or hiding them). Both erode trust. What builds trust is a balanced narrative: celebrating progress while also being candid about challenges and lessons learned.

Toohill recounted delivering her first sustainability report more than twenty years ago. “One of my investors told me, ‘Great [report], but if you do that again, I’ll throw it in the bin. You only told me the good stories.’” That moment underscored the point: transparency means showing the whole picture, not the polished one.

Transparency also means aligning words with actions. Organisations can commit to net zero even without knowing all the details, as long as there is a reasonable basis for the commitment, and support for what will be required to execute. That means clarity on who will do the work, how the board will oversee it, and how they will track progress.

Understanding and managing risk is the sector’s comfort zone. Yet sustainability leadership calls for a different skill: knowing which risks to take. 

Over-caution can stifle innovation. Challenging your risk appetite in service of new solutions unlocks opportunity. Banks can develop creative financing models, insurers can design products that reward resilience, and super funds can channel capital towards transition-enabling investments. 

That appetite for innovation grows when firms share learning and risk across the sector, turning sustainability challenges into opportunities for long-term value creation.

Delivering on these four priorities demands structure and courage. The next challenge for leaders is to create environments where people feel safe enough to experiment, learn, and take the right risks in pursuit of sustainability goals.

The panel identified two complementary enablers: sector-wide collaboration and place-based leadership. Together, they create the conditions for innovation, shared learning, and community trust.

Sector-wide collaboration allows firms to share risk and accelerate learning. By engaging in pilots and partnerships, firms can test new ideas collectively rather than in isolation.

For example, recent work with the Insurance Council of Australia’s Catastrophe Operations Working Group illustrated how collaboration can tackle challenges no single insurer could solve alone. Similar approaches could link banks, super funds, and government agencies to develop shared property-risk tools or common credit-risk frameworks for sustainable agriculture. Collaboration de-risks innovation and lifts sector-wide performance on matters of public value.

Place-based leadership ensures that sustainability efforts reflect local realities. Governments and regulators are increasingly supporting sustainability solutions tailored to specific communities, recognising that sustainability challenges differ across regions.

For financial services firms, grounding strategies in local context helps build trust and align actions. For instance, Nous worked with a major bank to embed just-transition principles in its approach – recognising that some regions will experience greater transition impacts than others. These place-based interventions became a core pillar of that strategy.

When firms listen to communities, co-design solutions, and share decision-making power, they unlock innovation that endures.

Both approaches highlight a critical point: sustainability transformation is not just a technical challenge but a cultural one. It requires a willingness to experiment, partner and share control – qualities that define bold leadership in financial services today.

The discussion underscored that the financial services sector has both a responsibility and an opportunity to lead Australia’s sustainability transition. The shift is cultural as much as strategic. It calls for leadership that is integrated, bespoke, and anchored from the top. Leadership that prioritises, allocates accountability, embraces transparency, and reframes risks as opportunities.

This is not easy work. But it is essential if financial services are to remain resilient, trusted, and competitive in the decades ahead.

Bold leadership means moving beyond compliance to conviction. At Nous, we believe a carefully designed ESG strategy acts as the golden thread that connects purpose, strategy, and customer value, turning aspiration into competitive advantage and new forms of shared value. 

That requires leaders who can set clear priorities, take ownership, and empower their organisations to act with integrity. It means acknowledging that while sustainability goals may be complex, the values behind them are simple: improving the lives of customers, communities, and society. 

At its heart, this is an adaptive challenge. It demands leaders who can constantly interpret, learn, and adapt, navigating the journey alongside their most important stakeholders. In the conviction era of sustainability, progress depends on leaders who act with integrity even when the path is uncertain.

Sustainability cannot mean the status quo. The challenges we face are too great, and too important, to accept business as usual. Together we must redefine sustainability as the organising logic that shapes value and trust. 

That is what bold, purpose-led leadership looks like, and it’s where the real work begins.

Get in touch to discuss how your organisation can turn its sustainability ambitions into action.

Connect with Carlos Blanco and Tony Fiddes on LinkedIn.

This is the first article in our three-part series of insights from senior financial services leaders on what bold sustainability leadership looks like today. 

Thank you to Janet Torney, Siobhan Toohill, and all participants in our September 2025 roundtable for their thoughtful contributions and the courage they continue to show in shaping the sustainability agenda in financial services.