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Oxford Sustainable Finance Group
programme
Oxford Sustainable Finance Group

Sustainability creates material risks and opportunities for financial institutions and the broader financial system. Efficient and effective access to finance and financial services is a necessary prerequisite for achieving global environmental and social sustainability. The University of Oxford has world-leading researchers and research capabilities relevant to understanding these hugely important issues.

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.

Established in 2012, the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group is the focal point for these activities. The Group is multi-disciplinary and works globally across asset classes, finance professions, and with different parts of the financial system. We have a track record of shaping the theory and practice of sustainable finance. Our research and teaching is sought after by major institutions representing trillions of dollars in assets and has been recognised internationally through numerous prizes, awards, and competitively won funding. We also contribute to shaping policy and regulation, and international scientific processes.

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 through long-running engagement with central banks and financial supervisors. We were the first academic group to engage with central banks and financial supervisors on climate-related financial risk.
  • Working closely with policymakers to design and implement policies that support sustainable finance, including the UK Green Finance Taskforce and the UK Green Finance Strategy, and through successive UNFCCC processes.
  • Establishing the Public and Third Sector Academy for Sustainable Finance (P3SA), a global capacity-building platform that has trained thousands of officials working in governments, central banks, and civil society organisations from across the world.
  • Contributing to international scientific processes, including the IPCC's Seventh Assessment Report (AR7, WGIII), where our director serves as a Coordinating Lead Author.
  • Co-leading the development of the Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT) framework and guidance, now embedded in regulation and adopted internationally via the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).
  • Founding the Agentic Finance Initiative, the first dedicated research and policy programme on the financial dimensions of the agentic economy.
  • Nurturing the expansion of a rigorous academic community internationally by conceiving, founding, and co-chairing theGlobal Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investment (GRASFI), an alliance of global research universities promoting rigorous and impactful academic research on sustainable finance.

Oxford Sustainable Finance Group

Video transcript

We need to make sure that all financial decision making takes account of the environment and of sustainability. And this needs to happen very, very quickly. The Oxford Sustainable Finance Group is a world-leading centre focused on aligning finance with global environmental sustainability. We work very closely with stakeholders across the financial system - banks, asset managers asset owners, insurers, supervisors, central banks, to help them to talk about these problems and co-create solutions and integrate climate change into financial decision making around the world.

We achieve our mission through pioneering research, through teaching and also through engagement, training the next generation of PhD students, to undergraduates, to very senior executives. If we're going to green the global financial system, we need the best people to have the knowledge, to have the networks, to be able to influence.

The community is growing. It's one of the largest concentrations of researchers working on sustainable finance anywhere in the world. We work to create the future of sustainable finance.

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