UK CGFI Leeds Innovation Hub Celebrates Climate Research Impact in the finance Industry – one year on and beyond - UK Centre for Greening Finance and Investment (CGFI)

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UK CGFI Leeds Innovation Hub Celebrates Climate Research Impact in the finance Industry – one year on and beyond

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06/02/2025

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In October 2024, we reached the first anniversary of the UK Centre for Greening Finance and Investment (CGFI) Leeds Innovation Hub. Since this milestone, work with the finance sector has continued apace. The team has made significant strides in bridging the gap between climate science and the finance industry, fostering collaborations that drive actionable solutions. Working with a range of key players and sectors, including the Bank of England, Aon, Nationwide, the Met Office, and Oasis LMF, our work has highlighted just how crucial the need for collaboration between industry and academia to ensure a low carbon climate resilient economy.

Based in Nexus at the University of Leeds, the CGFI Leeds Innovation Hub serves as a dynamic platform connecting climate science and innovation with financial institutions, focusing on climate and environmental analytics. Over the past year, we have been actively nurturing and supporting our region’s vibrant ecosystem in the climate science and finance sector. Through our events, internship programme, industry collaborations, and thought leadership, our efforts have created pathways for understanding sectoral needs and making the latest science accessible and usable. This has helped to position the UK as a global leader in climate and environmental analytics for financial institutions.

"At the heart of the University of Leeds Strategy sits collaboration and impact. Leeds has a distinctive capacity for the large-scale, interdisciplinary, global efforts that are needed to tackle the issues the world faces, such as climate change and economic instability. The UK CGFI exemplifies this ambition and places the UK as a global hub for climate and environmental data and analytics. Unlocking opportunities for us to lead the way in greening finance and financing green, UK CGFI brings global impact across every major sector."

Professor Nick Plant

Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation
University of Leeds

“We have had an amazing year, and we continue into 2025 with our crucial work at the intersection of climate science and the finance industry. By fostering a collaborative environment where these key players can work together, share knowledge, and develop solutions to the challenges identified, our hub and the University of Leeds are having a real industry impact."

Patricia Grant

Leeds Innovation Hub Manager, UK CGFI

As part of our ‘Collaborating for Impact’ initiative, in March, we partnered with Oasis Loss Modelling Framework and Lighthill Risk Network to launch a collaboration with the insurance sector. This sector manages investments of over £1.6 trillion and pays nearly £12 billion in taxes to the government, making its stability crucial to our economy. This initiative aims to address the biggest challenges facing the insurance industry by aligning cutting-edge climate science with practical applications. Working with the sector’s key players, our next steps involve bringing the wider ecosystem together to foster collaborations. In March 2025, we will embark on deep dive sessions to frame these challenges, form collaborative stakeholder groups, and agree on the next steps for the research agenda.

“The Leeds Innovation Hub is a prime example of how complex problems can be tackled through collaboration. The Hub brings together financial institutions, academics, climate scientists, and analytics businesses to innovate and develop solutions, particularly in the realm of climate and environmental analytics. It's often said that innovation is driven by academia, and the Leeds Innovation Hub exemplifies this by fostering a vibrant ecosystem where knowledge exchange and practical applications go hand in hand. The willingness of academics and industry specialists to come together at such hubs is truly inspiring and essential for addressing today's multifaceted challenges.”

Dickie Whitaker

Chief Executive, Oasis Loss Modelling Framework

"The past year has really demonstrated the importance of collaboration and partnership to innovate real world solutions that advance knowledge and science in a way that addresses real-world challenges and problems. It also underlines the necessity of talking across different groups in government, industry and academia to develop a common language and accelerate innovation across sectors.”

Professor Iain Clacher

Professor of Pensions and Finance, University of Leeds
Co-lead, UK CGFI

The Hub and the Building Societies Association (BSA) have joined forces to tackle pressing climate challenges faced by the building society sector. This collaboration will help the building society sector identify, understand, and address physical climate risks, enhancing resilience and leveraging opportunities for the sector and supporting the fundamental role that these institutions play in the everyday lives of UK citizens via their mortgage lending. Through this collaboration, we are advancing Climate Risk Analytics for the sector, establishing a foundation for collective action on shared challenges. Through our internship programme, we are about to embark on a project aimed at facilitating the integration of financial climate risk analytics and consumer-focused risk storylines into decision-making and business operations in the sector thus improving the financial resilience of the sector.

"Climate and transition risks are quickly becoming priorities for all mortgage lenders to consider and manage. We are excited to collaborate with the CGFI and leverage its expertise to provide valuable insights to our members. This enables them to communicate those risks to consumers and allows them to incorporate them into internal decisions."

Paul Broadhead

Head of Mortgages and Housing, BSA

''This collaboration presents a unique opportunity to bridge advanced climate analytics with practical decision-making and raising consumer awareness in the building society sector. By co-designing tailored climate risk storylines based on property-specific, vulnerability-led narratives for both customers and decision-makers, we aim to enhance risk communication with borrowers while equipping lenders with actionable tools to integrate climate considerations into lending strategies. Through close engagement with the sector, this collaboration paves the way for such scenario-based communication frameworks and visual tools that support meaningful climate adaptation across the industry.”

Dr Anubhav Choudhary

Research Fellow, UK CGFI

With demand for climate and environmental analytics (CEA) from financial institutions rapidly growing, we launched our Internship Programme with the aim of developing the next generation of financial climate risk analysts. The programme enables students to work on challenge-led projects that are co-created with financial institutions, fostering innovative approaches to address the most pressing climate-related challenges while providing valuable industry experience and starting to build the talent pipeline for financial institutions.

CGFI Internship Programme

Read our first internship blog

Dr David Wilkinson

Supervisory Risk Specialists, PRA, Bank of England
Fellow, UK CGFI

“We’re excited to host a UK CGFI intern. JBA has had many academic collaborations, which have benefited our clients' understanding of today’s and tomorrow’s flood risk. The Leeds Innovation Hub has enabled us to work more closely with the University of Leeds, including their excellent next-generation scientists, is crucial in helping us with this mission.”

Dr Paul Young

Head of Science, JBA Risk Management

We are excited to announce our 2025 Hackathon in partnership with Aon, ASPECT Project, Grantham Institute, JBA Risk Management, Maximum Information, Met Office, and the University of Reading, and supported by Leeds University Business School’s External Engagement Team. This event will bring together industry experts, scientists, early-career researchers, and industry practitioners for an exploratory hackathon aimed at improving our understanding of issues relevant to the (re)insurance industry, with a particular focus on tropical cyclones.

CGFI Hackathon 2025

“The hackathon represents an excellent opportunity for the insurance industry and research to come together to address a common industry, but also research, issue. By combining expertise from different sectors, we’re expecting new and insightful views to challenge the current insurance market view. The collaboration with the UK CGFI Leeds Innovation Hub at the University of Leeds has been pivotal in the development and support of this hackathon.”

Dr Adrian Champion

Head of Climate Analytics for UK & EMEA, Aon

“During the last 14 months we have been able to bring innovative climate science from academia into the finance industry, providing real benefits. Our deepening relationship with colleagues in the finance sector is helping to steer our research and better apply it to climate finance challenges. Over the coming months we’ll be facilitating deep dive events on key insurance problems, including a hackathon that will use climate data to provide new insight on tropical cyclone landfalls.”

Professor Jason Lowe OBE

Co-lead, UK CGFI
Head of Climate Services, Met Office

Our Connect Series has provided a range of thought leadership events. This has included showcasing the work of the UK’s Transition Plan Taskforce, established to provide ‘gold standard’ guidance on planning for the transition to a net zero and climate resilient economy. As well as this, we have highlighted key learnings from the Bank of England’s Climate Biennial Exploratory Scenario frameworks, which provide valuable insights into the systemic risks posed by climate change and how best to assess risks faced by individual financial institutions. In accelerating impact and dissemination, we have also worked with our sister NERC project, the Integrating Finance and Biodiversity program, which aims to align financial practice with nature and biodiversity. These events have brought together experts and practitioners to share knowledge, foster collaboration, and drive forward-thinking strategies in the financial sector.

"A key theme of UK CGFI’s work is to connect research with practice, build capacity and foster collaboration. It has been a real pleasure to work with colleagues from CGFI Leeds throughout 2024 to do this, including showcasing the work of the Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT) for which CGFI acted as the co-secretariat. We are looking forward to another great year for CGFI in 2025; our collective efforts have never been more important or more timely"