Financial institutions are taking a growing interest in the assessment of climate-related risks, encouraged by regulators, investors, Director duties and disclosure requirements. BlackRock, the world’s largest manager has stated it expects demonstrable fluency in climate risk from Directors. Of particular relevance is the recent report of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The aim of the TCFD is to provide a voluntary, consistent disclosure framework that improves ease of producing and using climate–related disclosures in financial statements. The call to action has been issued and it is time for companies to respond.
In view of the growing interest in this area the Actuaries Institute in co-operation with the Earth Systems and Climate Change (ESCC) Hub is hosting a seminar series called Climate Risk Fluency. The series of half-day seminars is intended to bring together staff working in companies’ risk, financial, corporate responsibility and sustainability teams with experts in climate risk science from CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and University research teams.
The first seminar in the series will explore the needs of business, and provide an overview of the types of information currently available about the past and future climate, and the techniques available to assess future hazard extremes. The seminar is a must attend event for anyone directly involved with or interested in how climate may affect financial institutions.
It is intended that later events in the series will provide a deeper dive into the current state of knowledge for specific types of hazard, including the case of case studies to illustrate. There are also plans to examine how stress scenarios can be used by companies to consider the climate risks faced, recognising that future climate outcomes are uncertain.
