$3trn investor group makes biggest push so far on TCFD disclosure

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec, Aviva and Storebrand are among nine investors collaborating on a “first mover project” to implement recommendations from the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
The nine, which also include Desjardins Group, Nordea Investment Management, Addenda Capital, La Française Group and Rockefeller Asset Management, have partnered with UN Environment to form “a leadership group to promote climate transparency by the investor community”.
“We would like companies to move from words to numbers in assessing climate risk in their investments, risk management and reporting,” said Yngve Slyngstad, the CEO of NBIM.
The group seeks to develop analytical tools and indicators to help assess and disclose their own exposure to climate risk and opportunity, including conducting scenario analysis – a key pillar of the TCFD recommendations, and one which Nordea CEO Nils Bolmstrand described as “instrumental to successfully managing climate-related risks”.
The TCFD was launched at the end of 2015 by the Financial Stability Board. It is Chaired by Michael Bloomberg, and currently has 37 other members, advisors and secretariat. These include former SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro; Chief Financial Officer of Unilever, Graeme Pitkethly; Axa’s Group Head of Regulation, Sustainability and Insurance Foresight, Christian Thimann; and David Blood, a Senior Partner at Generation Investment Management.In December, Bloomberg and Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England and Chair of the FSB, announced that 237 companies with a combined market cap of $6.3trn had publically committed to supporting the recommendations. This included 150 financial firms with nearly $82trn under management.
The new group will publish its jointly-developed scenarios, models and approaches at the end of the project, it said, in a bid to “enable other investors to pick up and expand on this joint work and encourage the wider investment community to assess how they can adapt to and promote a climate-resilient, low-carbon economy”.
Last year, UN Environment convened a similar group made up of 16 banks. Their work will conclude by the end of the second quarter, and findings and outcomes will be published.
One of the first places the investor group hopes its work will gain traction is among the 1,900 signatories of the Principles for Responsible Investment, which it says it will “closely coordinate with”. Likewise, Europe’s Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change, and those involved in the recently-launched Investor Agenda.
“The message from these investment leaders is clear – climate change is real and it is the single largest threat to our economy,” said UN Environment Chief, Erik Solheim.