Climate & Nature Risk Practitioner’s Month

Professor Jason A Lowe OBE is Chair in Interdisciplinary Climate Research, Priestley Centre, University of Leeds, and also Principal Fellow/Head of Climate Services for Government at the Met Office.

Jason has over 20 years’ experience as a climate researcher and research leader, contributing to over 200 publications on a diverse range of subjects relevant to both climate mitigation and adaptation.

He recently led the UKCP18 project, which developed innovative new climate scenarios for the UK, and is now being used extensively in the latest UK Climate Change Risk Assessment. Internationally, Jason has contributed to all three working groups of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and many UN climate reports.

Nell leads the design of climate and nature scenarios to support both group and regional Stress Testing and Capital Management at HSBC. Her responsibilities include enhancing frameworks to refine climate and nature sensitivity analyses, furnishing disclosures on environmental risk transmission channels, and managing the inclusion of climate and nature stressors into firm-wide credit risk models.

Prior to HSBC, Nell spent 3 years at geospatial start-ups (Terrabotics and Satellite Vu) harnessing Earth Observation data to derive novel ESG-aligned analytics, as well as 4 years as a Senior Commodities Research Analyst at Citi covering base and precious metals futures markets. Nell holds a BEng in Materials Science Engineering from Imperial College London, an MSc in Environmental Materials Science from UCL, she is also a GARP SCR Certificate holder

Loubna is an Actuary with 20+ years’ experience in risk management. In the last six years, Loubna has been particularly focusing on the embedding of climate and sustainability-related risks and opportunities within Aviva’s governance, risk management and reporting frameworks. 

Loubna is a passionate about sustainability challenges. She has supported the PRA/FCA Climate Financial Risk Forum (CFRF) since its establishment in 2019. She also participates in several other industry leading forums with the objective to raise awareness, influence, support the transition to net zero and build best practice across the financial sector. 

Kingsmill is an energy strategist for RMI. He has worked as a financial market analyst and strategist for over 25 years, including for Deutsche Bank, Sberbank and Citibank in London, Hong Kong and Moscow. 

He believes that the renewable revolution is the most important driver of financial markets and geopolitics in the modern era. He joined RMI from Carbon Tracker in 2022 to write analysis on the impact of the energy transition on financial markets, with a focus on the exponential growth of renewables and the peaking of fossil fuel demand.

Catherine is Impax’s Chief Strategy Officer. She is responsible for leading our business strategy, including corporate development activities and for leading the build of Impax/s digital strategy, inclusive of our data architecture and AI capability. With over 25 years of experience in sustainable development, finance, strategy and change management, she is also a highly respected leader in green finance.

Before joining Impax in 2021, Catherine spent five years at the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, including acting as Director General, responsible for around 500 staff tasked with developing the UK’s Net Zero Strategy and International Climate and Energy policy. She also chaired the UK Government’s Climate and Energy G7 Presidency in 2022. Before this, she was Global Head of Environmental Sustainability at Australian financial services firm ANZ. She was also Chief Operating Officer at Low Carbon Australia and Head of International Development at the Carbon Trust.

Outside of Impax, Catherine is on the Board of the Met Office and is the Chair of its Remuneration Committee.   

Catherine holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the London School of Economics, a master’s degree in Environmental Science and Management from Oxford University and a bachelor’ degree (Hons 1st) in Chemical Engineering from The University of Queensland.

James is Head of Climate Change at NatWest Group supporting the implementation of the bank’s purpose-led strategy which includes the role of principal sponsor of CoP26. He is a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Advisory Group for the ICAEW and a trustee for the Trust for Sustainable Living. He is committed to working on some of the most challenging global issues focusing on sustainable development and climate change. Prior to this, he was the head of the circular economy programme for London. 

James has spent his career working at the interface of the public and private sectors with a focus on mobilising finance. Before returning to the UK, James spent five years in Washington, DC as the Director for Climate Change at the World Bank.

Prior to joining the World Bank, he was a partner in the Corporate Finance Practice of the accounting firm, EY, and also worked for HM Treasury. James has a degree in Chemistry from the University of Durham and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales.

Ingrid Holmes is the Executive Director of the Green Finance Institute. Ingrid was previously a Director and Head of Policy and Advocacy at Federated Hermes International. She was also the firm’s climate change coordinator. She has over 15 years of experience working on environmental policy and sustainable finance issues. 

Prior to joining Hermes Ingrid was a Director at climate change think tank E3G, leading a range of global initiatives on sustainable and inclusive finance. She has also held positions at the low carbon asset manager Climate Change Capital; been an energy and environment adviser in the UK Parliament; and adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Prior to that she had a career in science publishing and journalism.

Ingrid has held a number of UK and EU advisory roles including Member of the UK Green Finance Initiative (2016/2018), Member of the European Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance (2017/2018) and ran the Secretariat for the Green Finance Taskforce (2017/2018). During the period 2019/2021 she was Vice Chair of the Disclosures Working Group within the UK Prudential Regulation Authority/Financial Conduct Authority Climate Financial Risk Forum and Co-Chair of the Investment Association’s Climate Change Working Group. She is currently a Member of the Lloyd’s ESG Advisory Group, acting as an independent expert on climate change.

Ingrid has a BSc in Biological Sciences (Hons Zoology) from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc/DIC in Environmental Technology from Imperial College London. Her BSc thesis was published in Genetical Research (Cambs) and she was awarded the Kathleen Lacy Prize for ranking first in her MSc specialism (Pollution Management).

Dr Nicola Ranger is Director of the Resilient Planet Finance Lab at the University of Oxford, Executive Director of the Oxford Martin Systemic Resilience Programme and leads the Resilience and Development Group of the Environmental Change Institute. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking of the Oxford Martin School and a co-Director of the UK Integrating Finance and Biodiversity Programme. 

Nicola brings 20 years' expertise in risk, analytics, economics, finance and fiscal policy as a practitioner and researcher across industry, government, IFIs and academia. She works with governments, Central Banks, regulators, financial institutions and international organisations to help align policy and finance with resilience and sustainability goals. She is currently a senior advisor to the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), a member of the UK’s Green Taxonomy Advisory Group and co-Chair of the Resilient Planet Data Hub, an international public-private partnership with the UN and Insurance Development Forum providing open data and analytics on climate and nature. Until recently she was a Visiting Academic at the Bank of England, a member of the European Commission’s High Level Expect Group on Sustainable Finance in Low and Middle Income Economies and a Director of the UK Centre for Greening Finance and Investment. 

Nicola joined Oxford from the World Bank’s Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice, where she worked with financial institutions, Ministries of Finance, Central Banks and regional institutions to strengthen financial resilience and implement systems and processes to strengthen national and global resilience to shocks and crises. Prior to this, she held senior roles at the UK Department for International Development, the London School of Economics and Political Science, HM Treasury, Risk Management Solutions and Defra. Nicola completed her postdoctoral research in climate economics and policy at the London School of Economics 

Rich is a dedicated leader and environmentalist on a mission to redefine conservation. With a PHD in data science he’s a trailblazer who combines high performance with experience in the public and private sector. 

Rich founded Oxygen Conservation in 2021 and has since built a natural capital portfolio worth an estimated £100m to protect almost 30,000 acres of land for nature and sequester more than 1 million tCO2e to deliver positive environmental and social impact and generate a profit as a result not the purpose.

Billy is Head of Climate Risk for Barclays, a function created in 2020 to support Barclays’ ambition to become a net zero bank by 2050 and help accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.

He is responsible for developing Barclays’ climate risk methodologies (including scenario analysis) and managing climate risk in the bank’s portfolio globally. Billy is a member of the Barclays Group’ Sustainability Committee and sits on the investment committee of its Sustainable Impact Capital portfolio.

He has had the pleasure of chairing the Bank of England Climate Financial Risk Forum (CFRF) working group on financial resilience this year.

Swenja is the managing director of climate and sustainability at Marsh McLennan, as well as a Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics. In her career as an academic, Swenja researched climate risk management and resilience strategies, with a focus on public policies, financial instruments and individual behaviour. She has also held several advisory roles with corporates, regulatory authorities and governments, including the Bank of England and the World Bank.

Antonio leads the design and development of global scenarios and forecasting for BAU and climate stress testing and strategic planning at HSBC. His responsibilities include leading the assessment of the key business vulnerabilities and the identification of risk themes to test capital resilience, recovery actions or climate risks. 

He has been with HSBC for 7 years and previously was senior economist at IHS MarkIt (currently part of S&P Global) responsible for the risk rating of emerging markets’ banking systems and financial stability. He holds a MA in Intl Economics from SAIS-Johns Hopkins University and a BSc and MSc in Engineering from UPC-Barcelona tech.

Sandy Trust is passionate about climate change and sustainability. His personal mission is to help re-connect finance and the economy to nature and the biosphere to deliver a future worth living in. 

Sandy sits on IFOA Council and is past Chair of the IFOA’s Sustainability Board. He leads the actuarial profession’s research with Earth System scientists on climate change and sustainability topics, recent papers include The Emperor’s New Climate Scenarios and Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. He advises a range of industry and policy climate initiatives on climate risk and net zero approaches.

He works in financial services with large investors to develop and implement their approaches to sustainability.