The Nordic Roadmap for Circular Financing – implementation phase
The Nordic Roadmap for Circular Financing aims to integrate circular principles into the financial sector. The implementation phase, led by RISE and funded by RE:Source, focuses on knowledge exchange, policy development and case studies. Nordic financial actors are invited to participate in seminars, research collaborations and testing of circular finance models.
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Background and purpose
The Nordic Roadmap for Circular Financing is a joint initiative between RISE, Research Institutes of Sweden and the Nordic Circular Hotspot. It was developed together with 15 different partners, with ten of the signatories representing the financial sector in four of the Nordic countries. The roadmap was launched in October 2023.
You can read and download the roadmap as a PDF here:
The implementation phase, starting in 2025 and planned to last until the end of 2027, aims to continue the activities and calls outlined in the roadmap. This work will be led by RISE and funded by RE:Source.
All financial actors in the Nordic countries are welcome to participate!
Vision and goals
As outlined in the roadmap, the long-term vision of the work is to achieve: “A financial market supporting a regenerative and inclusive economy”.
The goal for 2030 is outlined as follows: “Financial actors have seized the opportunity of the circular economy, through integration and implementation of circular financing as a key factor in their business, including risk assessment and credit and investment strategy.”
What will we do?
The work to start implementing the roadmap is a first step towards creating a long-term coordination platform for circular finance in the Nordic region. This platform will engage with the financial sector in a number of different ways, which will hopefully lead to the acceleration of both knowledge and capacity building, the creation of case studies, and the consequent increase in access to capital for circular businesses and circular ventures of various kinds.
Examples of planned activities are:
- Knowledge sharing webinars
- Research collaborations
- Policy briefs
- Circular risk framework testing
- Real case match making
- Creating a case library
In spring 2025, we plan to organize three webinars to bring together interested parties, share expertise and set up some working groups on priority topics.
The roadmap
The Roadmap clearly identifies a number of steps and actions that need to be taken to achieve these objectives. They are linked to one or more of the three main themes: Knowledge and capacity building, debt financing and equity financing.
The Roadmap concludes with four calls for action, with steps that need to be taken as soon as possible to ensure progress on circular finance as set out in the Roadmap. These are:
- Financial actors of all kinds should continue to accelerate efforts to create more real-world examples of financing circular businesses, themselves and by working with new partners. Check what you can do on your own within your current mandate.
- Financial actors should proactively assess resource-related risks within linear business models to ensure their validity, and be aware that the assumptions underlying the risk assessment may be outdated due to the triple planetary crisis
- Continue to disseminate success stories to both internal and external audiences.
- A coordination platform needs to be created to engage more partners and create the basis needed for further work. Some form of coordination platform is a prerequisite both for structured data collection, for coordinated communication activities, for focused cooperation with regulatory bodies and for international development, including driving the work on risk assessment and metrics framework together with the Dutch team.
Related links
Finance Programme, Circle Economy
Circular Finance through the Circular Risk Scorecard, De Nederlandsche Bank
