About

Aligning finance with sustainability is a necessary condition for tackling the environmental and social challenges facing humanity. It is also necessary for financial institutions and the broader financial system to manage the risks and capture the opportunities associated with the transition to global environmental sustainability.

The University of Oxford has world-leading researchers and research capabilities relevant to understanding these challenges and opportunities. Established in 2012 the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group is the focal point for these activities. The Group is multidisciplinary and works globally across asset classes, finance professions, and with different parts of the financial system. We are the largest such centre globally and are working to be the world's best place for research and teaching on sustainable finance and investment.

We are based in one of the world's great universities and the oldest university in the English-speaking world. We work with leading practitioners from across the investment chain (including actuaries, asset owners, asset managers, accountants, banks, data providers, investment consultants, lawyers, ratings agencies, stock exchanges), with firms and their management, and with experts from a wide range of related subject areas (including finance, economics, management, geography, data science, anthropology, climate science, law, area studies, psychology) within the University of Oxford and beyond.

The Global Sustainable Finance Advisory Council that guides our work contains many of the key individuals and organisations working on sustainable finance. The Oxford Sustainable Finance Group's founding Director is Dr Ben Caldecott.

Since our foundation we have made significant and sustained contributions to the field, including in some of the following areas:

• Developing the concept of stranded assets, now a core element of the theory and practice of sustainable finance.
• Contributions to the theory and practice of measuring environmental risks and impacts via new forms of geospatial data and analysis, including introducing the idea and importance of spatial finance and asset-level data.
• Shaping the theory and practice of supervision as it relates to sustainability by working with the Bank of England, the central banks' and supervisors' Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), among others.
• Working closely with policymakers to design and implement policies to support sustainable finance, including through the UK Green Finance Taskforce, UK Green Finance Strategy, COP26, and the high-level Transition Plan Taskforce.
• Nurturing the expansion of a rigorous academic community internationally by conceiving, founding, and co-chairing the Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investment (GRASFI), an alliance of 30 global research universities promoting rigorous and impactful academic research on sustainable finance.