Environmental scientist Laura Garcia Velez cut her teeth on projects to help Ethiopian farmers insure crops for drought and connect remote Colombian communities to the electricity grid before working for conservation campaigners WWF.

Now she's an analyst for Lombard Odier, charged with improving the $350 billion Swiss bank's green credentials.

"It's really important that finance recruits from science," said Velez, one of a growing number of campaigners and scientists who have switched to banking, which she hopes can play a role in "greening the polluting industries."