DBS Bank has appointed Shilpa Gulrajani as head of sustainability of its institutional banking group.
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Gulrajani joins DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, after more than 20 years with French lender BNP Paribas, where latterly she was head of corporate development and sustainability for Asia Pacific.
In her new role, she will be leading the bank’s sustainable finance business in the region, which will involve driving environmental, social and governance (ESG) business origination, as well as advisory and financing solutions to help companies transition to net zero.
DBS became Southeast Asia’s first bank to update its coal policy to allow for the managed phase-out of coal-fired power plants in March, amid growing scrutiny for the climate-vulnerable region’s lenders to stop financing fossil fuels.
Gulrajani will co-lead the bank’s work on the Singapore-Asia Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance, a regional guiding framework that Singapore’s central bank has launched to help businesses and financial institutions manage climate risks. The taxonomy helps to define transition activities and aims to provide a credible framework to phase out coal plants in the region.
Gulrajani started her banking career in 2002 with Citigroup in India. In 2004, she joined BNP Paribas as head of business development in 2004, and worked in investment banking and strategy roles before pivoting to sustainability in 2021.
She joins DBS seven months after the departure of Yulanda Chung, who stepped down as head of sustainability for institutional banking and head of sustainable finance after six and a half years with the bank. Chung is now the advisor to the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a global partnership of countries that are disproportionately affected by the consequences of climate change.
