The Financial Services Sector represents a vital component of our nation’s critical infrastructure. Some smaller financial centres, such as Bermuda , Luxembourg , and the Cayman Islands , lack sufficient size for a domestic financial services sector and have developed a role providing services to non-residents as offshore financial centres The increasing competitiveness of financial services has meant that some countries, such as Japan, which were self-sufficient have increasingly imported financial services.

The exchanges are financial institutions whose objectives are to apply financial innovation and incentives to advance social, environmental and economic goals through cap and trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide and derivatives exchanges that offer standardized and cleared futures and options contracts on emission allowances and other environmental products.

Thus, when we discuss the financial services’ industry performance as related to environmental sustainability we should keep in mind the confused state of definitions, of relationships, and lack of incentives to invest in socially responsible activities.

Some authors state that financial services organizations have a financial motivation to integrate sustainability into business, mostly those organizations in Europe (Cortazar, Schwartz and Salinas, 1998; Klassen and McLaughlin, 1996; Russo and Fouts, 1997).

In all likelihood, however, the financial services organizations will need to partner with other organizations to produce these data, such as with the Global Reporting Initiative or independent rating agencies, such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales or the Financial Accounting Standards Board in the USA (Gray, 2006).