February 2021
05Feb

UK. FCA Launches Defined Benefit Advice Assessment Tool

Last month, the FCA launched its Defined Benefit Advice Assessment Tool (“DBAAT“) as part of its strategy to reduce harm to consumers and improve the suitability of defined benefit (“DB“) transfer advice. The tool will help firms to understand precisely how the FCA assesses the suitability of DB transfer advice. Background The launch of DBAAT comes in light of the FCA’s concerns that consumers are being advised to move their pensions out of DB schemes, despite the fact that...

February 5, 2021
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05Feb

Debt for Climate: Green Bonds and Other Instruments

By Paul Rose This chapter, prepared for the Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Climate Finance and Investment Law (2020, Michael Mehling and Harro van Asselt (eds.)), examines the rise of green bonds, climate bonds, and other green financial instruments. Although climate finance has enjoyed positive momentum in recent years, this momentum is at risk—with the possibility of reversal—if climate markets fail to provide competitive risk-adjusted returns. For climate finance to compete effectively, governments, issuers, and investors must resolve a...

February 5, 2021
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04Feb

UK. Pension scheme trustees challenged over climate change reporting

The new regulations will require occupational pension schemes to have – and report on – effective governance, strategy, risk management and accompanying metrics and targets for the assessment and management of climate-related risks and opportunities. A key requirement is that pension schemes report disclosure aligned with the taskforce on climate-related financial disclosures (TCFD) framework. Since an earlier consultation in this area, the government has announced its intention to make TCFD-aligned disclosures mandatory across the economy by 2025, with a...

February 4, 2021
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January 2021

26Jan

US. NYC pension funds vote to divest $4 bln from fossil fuels

Two New York City pension funds voted to divest their portfolios of some $4 billion worth of fossil fuel company securities, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Comptroller Scott Stringer, and fund trustees said https://on.nyc.gov/39ejxHM. "Fossil fuels are not only bad for our planet and our frontline communities, they are a bad investment,” said de Blasio in a statement on Monday. New York was among a dozen big cities worldwide that pledged to shift their money out of the fossil fuel...

January 26, 2021
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14Jan

How climate change is ruining retirement across the US

Jay Gamel, 76, still talks about his Northern California home in the present tense, as if nothing had happened. “The place is a paradise by any measure,” says Gamel, who is semiretired. “The mountains are beautiful, the surroundings are gorgeous. It’s a postcard.” For 26 years, Gamel had lived in — no, reveled in — his little redwood cabin in the Sonoma County town of Kenwood, where he edits a twice-monthly local newspaper. Gamel, who moved there from Chicago,...

January 14, 2021
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December 2020

15Dec

Divest or direct? Pension funds weigh their options in the climate crisis

n March 2017, Waltham Forest Council in London held £53.4m in investments in coal, oil and gas through its pension fund. Each of the 16,500 current and former workers who were members of the council’s pension scheme had more than £3,000 invested in fossil fuels. But this was about to change: the previous year, the council had become the first local authority in the UK to announce the divestment of fossil fuel holdings from its pension funds. Divestment can...

December 15, 2020
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10Dec

New York’s $226 Billion Pension Fund Is Dropping Fossil Fuel Stocks

New York State’s pension fund, one of the world’s largest and most influential investors, will drop many of its fossil fuel stocks in the next five years and sell its shares in other companies that contribute to global warming by 2040, the state comptroller said on Wednesday. Read also Exxon Under Pressure From New Activist Fund With $226 billion in assets, New York’s fund wields clout with other retirement funds and its decision to divest from fossil fuels could accelerate...

December 10, 2020
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07Dec

Exxon Under Pressure From New Activist Fund

Exxon Mobil Corp. is facing the threat of a proxy fight from a newcomer activist investor with a sustainability bent that wants the beleaguered energy giant to act faster to remake itself. Engine No. 1 LLC, an investment firm launched by Chris James last week, is preparing to send a letter to Exxon ’s board urging the Irving, Texas-based company to focus more on investments in clean energy while cutting costs elsewhere to preserve its dividend. The letter, a...

December 7, 2020
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04Dec

EIOPA launches discussion paper on a methodology for integrating climate change in the standard formula

Today, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) published a discussion paper on a methodology for the potential inclusion of climate change in the Solvency II standard formula when calculating natural catastrophe underwriting risk. This discussion paper is a follow-up to EIOPA’s Opinion on Sustainability within Solvency II issued in September last year, which concluded that there is a need to consider if and how climate change-related perils could be better captured in the Solvency II framework...

December 4, 2020
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November 2020

19Nov

Canada. More firms disclosing climate-related risks, strategies: report

Within the last three years, Canada’s financial firms have increasingly begun providing insight on their material climate-related risks and goals in alignment with recommendations from the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), A new study from the Global Risk Institute in Financial Services (GRI) said there’s been a 40% increase in the number of companies that provide TCFD-related disclosure and information. There are now 25 firms, include big banks and pension funds, that follow TCFD recommendations, compared to...

November 19, 2020
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