Beyond the Horizon: New Tools and Frameworks for Transition Risk Assessments from UNEP FI’s TCFD Banking Programme
Thirty-nine global financial institutions from six continents participated in UNEP FI’s second TCFD banking programme. Through this yearlong engagement, the participating banks collaborated with climate risk experts and each other to improve financial assessments of transition risk. In doing so, these banks built on the industry-leading transition risk methodology developed by UNEP FI and Oliver Wyman in the first TCFD banking program.
This report covers the three primary enhancements to transition risk assessments undertaken by programme participants. First, sector-specific working groups participants explored transition risks in a broad range of economic sectors. Then, Oliver Wyman helped UNEP FI build a user-friendly webtool, Transition Check, to run transition risk assessments using the latest climate scenarios (including the reference scenarios produced by the Network for Greening the Financial System). Finally, the participating banks undertook a comprehensive transition risk heatmapping exercise. This exercise generated insights into how climate-sensitive sectors may be impacted during a low-carbon transition. The heatmaps produced not only evaluate transition risks for sectors overall but also for more granular sub-sectors as well.
UNEP FI believes that Transition Check and the transition heatmap will be valuable tools for the financial industry in evaluating, disclosing, and managing transition risks. Transition Check provides users with losses and default probabilities for sectors, industries, and borrowers in a structured, downloadable format. The transition heatmap reflects the combined perspectives from the nearly forty participating institutions on transition risks to sectors and industries. Taken together, Transition Check and the transition heatmap will enable institutions to conduct climate risk analyses in a standardized and comparable format, which is essential for enhancing future TCFD disclosures.