ICMA

The Green Bond Principles are voluntary process guidelines for issuers whose bond proceeds finance projects with environmental benefits. ICMA has provided the secretariat since the governance of the Principles was set up in 2014, and the current edition dates from June 2025. That edition adds activities to the definition of green projects and refers to the guidance on green enabling projects from June 2024.

The 2025 edition names four core components: use of proceeds, the process for project evaluation and selection, management of proceeds, and reporting. Two key recommendations add transparency, since issuers should describe their approach in a green bond framework and have it assessed in an external review. Reporting on the use of proceeds lets investors follow the money to the funded projects and see their estimated environmental impact.

Next to the Green Bond Principles, ICMA coordinates the Social Bond Principles, the Sustainability Bond Guidelines and the Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles, which together form the Principles. ICMA describes them as the de facto global issuance standard for sustainable bonds, referenced by 96 percent of issuers in 2025. The secretariat also publishes guidance on climate transition finance, impact reporting and external reviews, and ICMA supports codes of conduct for providers of ESG ratings and data.

Full membership of ICMA is open to banks, securities dealers, asset and fund managers, insurers, trading venues, central counterparties and settlement systems. Government institutions, central banks, rating agencies, trade bodies, law firms and consultants can join as associate members, who use all services of ICMA but do not vote at general meetings or sit on the board.

ICMA groups its members in sixteen regions, among them Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and the Nordic countries. Each region has its own committee, and the chairs of the regional committees form the committee of regional representatives, which reports to the board.

The AGM and Conference is the flagship event of ICMA and brings its global membership together once a year. The 57th edition took place in Frankfurt in 2025 with nearly 1,200 delegates, after the 56th edition in Brussels.

During the year ICMA runs forums such as the European Primary Market Forum in London and a secondary markets forum with the buy-side forum of its Asset Management and Investors Council. The European Repo and Collateral Council of ICMA holds its own general meeting and conference, and regional committees organize events such as a lunch of the German region in Frankfurt.

ICMA launched the Global Master Repurchase Agreement, the master contract for repo transactions in the international market, in 1992. ICMA maintains the GMRA together with legal opinions, a clause library and a taxonomy of its clauses.

The European Repo and Collateral Council, set up in 1999 as the European Repo Council, publishes a survey of the European repo market twice a year. The 50th survey counted outstanding repo and reverse repo of 13.7 trillion euros on the books of 59 participants in December 2025, 24.6 percent more than a year earlier.

ICMA has its seat at Dreikönigstrasse 8 in 8002 Zurich and offices in London, Paris, Brussels and Hong Kong. The Paris office opened in 2009, when ICMA took over the business of the euro debt market association AMTE, and the Brussels representative office followed in 2021 to strengthen the presence of ICMA in the EU.

In Europe, working groups of ICMA deal with T+1 settlement, the settlement discipline rules under CSDR and the consolidated tape for bonds. Until the end of 2016 ICMA was partly subject to Swiss supervision as an institution similar to an exchange, and FINMA still counts ICMA among its national stakeholders.

Bryan Pascoe has been chief executive of ICMA since 6 September 2021 and is an ex officio member of the board. The board has 22 members, 21 of whom the general meeting elects for three-year terms, and Stephen Fisher, head of government and public affairs at Deutsche Bank in London, chairs it.

Christoph Hock, head of tokenization and digital assets at Union Investment in Frankfurt, and Claudio Vittorio Volpi of UniCredit Bank in Munich are among the board members from Germany. Isabelle Delorme of Euroclear in Brussels and Cyril Rousseau of the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg also sit on the board.