ABN Amro's consistent commitment to the green bond market helped it secure the award for lead manager of the year for bonds issued by banks, according to one judge.

The Dutch lender was bookrunner in eight green bond deals from bank issuers, making its share of the combined deals worth €983 million ($1.2 billion) in 2017. 

It was structuring advisor and/or bookrunner on inaugural green bonds from SEB, Swedbank, Barclays, Hypo Vorarlberg, Deutsche Hyp and Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg (LBBW), and repeat mandates from market regulars Berlin Hyp and DKB.

Joop Hessels, head of green, social and sustainability bonds at ABN Amro, told Environmental Finance that the bank has built up "first-hand experience in tackling green tagging issues, which many inaugural bank green bond issuers are facing.

"Part of our success as a team is related to our expertise in real estate criteria in different European jurisdictions and other innovative areas, but also on impact reporting, a growing focus area for investors," he added.

ABN Amro is part of an initiative to promote green tagging, which enables banks to identify the environmental attributes of their loans and underlying asset collateral as a tool for scaling up sustainable finance.

In August 2017, the Dutch lender also started offering reduced interest rates to help homeowners increase the energy efficiency of their properties.

Including corporate issues, it was involved in 11 deals, making its share worth $1.58 billion.

According to data from Environmental Finance's Green Bond Database, ABN Amro was among the top 20 global underwriters of green bonds last year.