We study whether environmental engagement of banks mitigates the effects of natural disasters and climate-change related events on financial stability. Employing an extensive global dataset with quarterly data (2003–2019; 5,317 observations), our analysis reveals that environmental innovation financing, product responsibility, and resource reduction policies are able to curtail the repercussions on stability of economic costs due to environmental events. We also find that the lending function of banks is a relevant mediating channel for this relationship. Since borrowers’ vulnerability to climate issues may be reflected in non-performing loans, banks’ environmental engagement provides protection against future related credit losses. Moreover, by capitalizing on global disasters as quasi-natural experiments, we provide empirical evidence confirming that a stronger environmental engagement of banks enhances their post-event financial resilience. Taken together, our results convey several key implications: i) bank executives can improve financial stability by embracing environmental policies, ii) stronger regulatory actions towards environmental sensitivity in the banking sector is supported, and iii) environmentally engaged banking systems can mitigate the economic costs associated with climate change and environmental disasters.

我们研究银行的环保参与是否减轻了自然灾害和气候变化相关事件对金融稳定的影响。我们使用包含季度数据的广泛全球数据集（2003-2019 年；5,317 个观察值），分析表明环境创新融资、产品责任和资源削减政策能够减少环境事件对经济成本稳定性的影响。我们还发现，银行的借贷功能是这种关系的相关中介渠道。由于借款人对气候问题的脆弱性可能会反映在不良贷款中，因此银行的环境参与可以防止未来相关的信贷损失。此外，通过利用全球灾难作为准自然实验，我们提供了经验证据，证实银行更强有力的环境参与可以增强其事后财务弹性。总而言之，我们的结果传达了几个关键含义：i）银行高管可以通过接受环境政策来提高金融稳定性，ii）支持针对银行业环境敏感性采取更强有力的监管行动，以及iii）参与环保的银行系统可以减轻经济成本与气候变化和环境灾害有关。