Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, or ANZ, has appointed Mara Chiorean as sustainable finance director, based in Singapore.
Chiorean makes the switch from consumer goods firm Johnson & Johnson, where she was global community impact Asia Pacific project director, and brings a decade of experience in sustainability to the role.
She joins ANZ at a time when banks are ramping up their sustainable finance teams as demand for environmental, social and governance-focused (ESG) investments surges in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
ANZ has been building its sustainable finance team over the past three years, and Chiorean is the latest addition to a regional team that added Katie Wood as an associate director in Melbourne, and a director-level hire in Auckland.
The bank is also upskilling existing employees in sustainable finance. The Melbourne-headquarterd bank recently appointed Andrew Brown as director, sustainable finance capital markets, creating the capacity in his debt capital markets role to identify sustainable finance opportunities in global markets.
Chiorean said she was joining a market-leading team for finding sustainable solutions for customers. She noted that sustainable finance is on an “exponential growth trajectory” and has the potential to drive capital towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Chiorean worked for J&J for two and a half years, joining the company in 2019. Before J&J, Chiorean worked for sustainability consultancy CSR Asia, where she spent seven years, latterly as executive director, based in Hong Kong.
Chiorean has lectured in corporate sustainability at the University of Hong Kong.
