ENCORE was developed by the Natural Capital Finance Alliance in partnership with UNEP-WCMC and was financed by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and the MAVA Foundation.

The first phase of work was funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and the MAVA Foundation. This was undertaken as part of the Advancing Environmental Risk Management project. The aim of the project is to help financial institutions to better understand, assess and integrate natural capital risks in their activities. In addition to the development of the information behind ENCORE, this project looked at how financial institutions can apply this information to screen their portfolios for natural capital risk and integrate the insights into their existing risk management processes. Initially, these pilot studies have been carried out with banks in Colombia, Peru, and South Africa and the Natural Capital Finance Alliance is working on broadening this work to other geographies and types of financial institutions.

The current phase of work is funded by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment FOEN, and aims to further develop ENCORE to help financial institutions answer the following questions:

• Am I influencing biodiversity through my investment or lending portfolio?
• Am I harming or building the resilience of biodiversity with my investments?
• Is my portfolio in alignment with global/regional biodiversity targets and how much so?

The NCFA is a finance sector led initiative, providing expertise, information and tools on material aspects of natural capital for financial institutions. It works to support these institutions in integrating natural capital considerations into their risk management processes and products as well as helping them to discover new opportunities. The NCFA Secretariat is run jointly by the UNEP Finance Initiative and Global Canopy.