Sustainable Banking Risk Governance After the EU Sustainability Omnibus
The EU's Sustainability Omnibus directive entered into force on 18 March 2026, materially narrowing the scope of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Mandatory CSRD reporting now applies only to companies with more than 1,000 employees and over €450 million in net turnover; CSDDD thresholds rise to 5,000 employees and €1.5 billion in turnover, with the requirement to adopt a climate transition plan removed entirely. For banks, the practical effect is not less work — it's a harder risk-governance problem: less standardized ESG data from counterparties and value chains, at precisely the moment regulators expect banks to keep redirecting capital toward sustainable investment.
Strategic Risk Management and Sustainable Banking, by Jason Crawford and Fredrik Nilsson of Uppsala University, was built for exactly this tension. The book examines how strategic risk management (SRM) is integrated into a bank's transformation toward sustainability — not as theory alone, but through an in-depth empirical case study of 'Nordbank', a large European bank headquartered in the Nordic region. Chapters 1–3 lay out the concepts and the ESG regulatory backdrop; Chapters 4–6 trace how Nordbank is actually restructuring risk governance and integrating ESG into its management control systems; Chapter 7 closes with key insights for practitioners.
As the European Central Bank and the EU's banking regulator continue to flag that reduced CSRD data standardization creates new challenges for credit risk and counterparty assessment, this book gives risk officers, sustainability teams and finance faculties a rare grounded account of how strategic risk management frameworks are evolving in practice — not in a vacuum, but inside a real institution navigating the same Omnibus-era constraints now facing every EU-exposed bank.
It is intended for scholars and students in business and management, and the sub-fields of accounting, finance and strategic management — as well as for banking risk and ESG professionals tracking how the post-Omnibus landscape is reshaping governance in practice.
Explore more titles in our Economics & Finance Collection.
Q&A
Where can I buy Strategic Risk Management and Sustainable Banking?
Directly from CLNZ Books, with worldwide shipping included — view the book here.
What changed under the EU's 2026 Sustainability Omnibus?
The Omnibus directive, in force since 18 March 2026, raised CSRD reporting thresholds to over 1,000 employees and €450 million turnover, raised CSDDD thresholds to over 5,000 employees and €1.5 billion turnover, and removed the mandatory climate transition plan requirement.
What is 'Nordbank' in this book?
Nordbank is the pseudonymized large European bank at the center of the book's empirical case study on integrating strategic risk management with ESG governance.
Who are the authors?
Jason Crawford and Fredrik Nilsson, accounting and strategy scholars at the Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University, Sweden.
Who should read this book?
Banking risk officers, ESG and sustainability professionals, and finance and accounting academics seeking an empirically grounded account of strategic risk management in sustainable banking.