#03

Daniel Klier on why COVID-19 may be a breakthrough moment for green finance, and how we can unleash a revolution in greening personal finance.

Daniel Klier is Global Head of Sustainable Finance at HSBC. Prior to joining the bank in 2013, he was a Partner at McKinsey, and he led HSBC’s strategy work on the world in 2050. He has a PhD from Columbia University and chairs the Sustainable Finance Working Group at the Institute of International Finance (IIF) and the Climate Risk Working Group at the Bank of England.

We talked about the impacts of the pandemic on green finance, about whether the stronger performance of green financial products across the board is a durable trend, and why the next big trend in climate action will be the push for “Green Personal Finance for All”.

The pandemic is not just a “live test” of a climate-like shock to world supply chains, it’s also a critical opportunity to accelerate and scale up the sustainable finance agenda.

 

Daniel is Global Head of Sustainable Finance at HSBC, based in London.

He joined HSBC in 2013 as Group Head of Strategy in London. Prior to that, he was a Partner at McKinsey and Company. He has a PhD from Columbia University and the University of Dortmund after studying Business Administration at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland and the London School of Economics.

Daniel chairs the Sustainable Finance Working Group at the Institute of International Finance (IIF) and the Climate Risk Working Group at the Bank of England. He is a member of the Board of Sustainable Energy for all.

Resources

Moving green finance to the mainstream – HSBC Insights, July 2 2019

ESG stocks did best in COVID-19 slump – HSBC Insights, March 27 2020

7 priorities to help the global economy recover – HSBC Insights, May 6 2020

A green reboot for the global economy – HSBC Insights – May 12, 2020

Transcript

Daniel: And so I think there’s a real case here that this crisis will accelerate this transition that we believe will happen over the next 10-15 years to a much shorter period.

Denise: Welcome back to New Climate Capitalism, the podcast about finance, activism and climate change.

Trying to follow green finance is a bit like trying to make sense of the diagrams for the IKEA furniture. There’s no easy way to translate them, and people come away feeling frustrated and inept.

One look at the EU page online for sustainable finance, and you might get a similar sinking feeling. How are non-specialists supposed to make sense of this maze of expert groups, action plans, strategies, taxonomies and platforms. 

In fact, I think Green finance is obscure by design. It’s intended for big investors, not for people like you and me. And this is one of the things I wanted to explore with our guest today, Daniel Klier.

Daniel is head of sustainable finance at HSBC. He joined in 2013 from McKinsey to lead the world in 2050 strategy work for the bank. What you’ll notice in the interview is that Daniel has this signature McKinsey big picture way of talking, which really brings a lot of clarity to these topics.

We talked about the impact covid 19 is having on green finance. About the difference between financing green, and greening finance. And much more.

There’s one more thing. Daniel reveals why green finance is still hiding behind a paywall from the general public.

I hope you enjoy the episode.

Daniel: Let me give you just a little bit of background. So I joined in 2013. We’ve done quite a big transformation with HSBC over that time. And as we came towards the end of that transformation period, we had to think about what the world will look like in 2050? Because clearly we wanted to, I think, build an institution that is aligned with some of the big mega trends of the future and prioritize our investments along those lines. 

We spent a lot of time looking at the future demographics, future investment flows.

And it’s no surprise that you come out with two big mega themes among many other topics, but the two mega themes are clearly: China playing a much more important role in the world, not just as a domestic economy, but also going beyond its borders or the Belt and Road initiative and the like. And the other big topic, it’s the transition to a low carbon economy.

If you take those two topics together, you probably have 150 trillion (dollars) of investments that will be going into the world in the next decade or two decades. And if you are a financial institution, that is really the lifeblood of what will drive financial markets over the next few decades. 

Denise: Now we’re in 2020. How are those conclusions looking today? 

Daniel: I think those conclusions are more true than ever. So in 2017, we announced our big push into sustainable finance. We also launched a lot of work around China’s Belt and Road initiative.

If you look at both of these topics three years down the road, they are even more important than ever. I’m talking about the climate change agenda, which is really our focus today. I think we’ve seen a huge amount of momentum over the last three years, the number of governments and countries committing to a net zero agenda.

The number of companies committing to better disclosure and, and more investments. 

But also I think the recognition now in the crisis that ESG is really a risk and a performance driver is important. I think we’ve been building up that narrative for a very, very long time. There was a very strong belief among Investors, but also increasingly the wider public, that investing into companies that are more aligned with the climate agenda, companies that are more aligned with a good ESG agenda. actually are the ones that will perform better and this crisis is I think, the real first test point and proof point that this belief is actually true.

Denise: I just wanted to ask about your theory of change, on the role of the financial sector in this energy transition. I hear you saying that ESG has passed its first test from the COVID-19 crisis. But I guess a lot of people complain that many of these changes that you’ve talked about in the last three years are a little bit skin deep, it’s a bit performative. So how would you describe your theory of change?

Daniel: Yeah. So I think it’s a, it’s a very good question. The theory of change here is, is I think very, very strong. And also the role for the financial sector is very strong.

I think I mentioned before, we know we need to invest about a hundred trillion into the transition to a low carbon economy. And it’s really, I think two separate discussions, which are important to have. 

One is how do we finance green, and the second discussion is how do we green finance. 

So financing green means how do we mobilize the capital necessary to support all of these new technologies and sustainable infrastructure investments and the amount of capital that needs to go into the future economy. I think that’s a big role and we’ve seen a lot of progress over the last few years. You’ve seen a phenomenal rise in the green bond market, emergence of a green loan market. You’ve seen green mortgages and green consumer lending come into play. 

It’s still early stage, but it’s now at a stage where it’s large enough that it matters and large enough that I think nobody can ignore this market anymore. And I think that after only three, four years of development, is a real sign of success and strength.

But as important, I think is the second element, the second theory of change is how do we green finance. So how do we actually bring better disclosure, better information into the core of the economy? Because I think we all know that it’s the core of the current economy that will have to transform to really deliver this change.

I find one statistic really telling here, 100 companies in the world are responsible for 70% of greenhouse gas emissions. Those are obviously oil and gas utilities, the steel sector, the cement sector, transportation, and it’s those companies that need to transition. Not today, not tomorrow, but over the next decade.

And so I think it’s really important that we also pay enough attention to the second element because this is where better disclosure, better incentives, better risk management scenario analysis falls in. And that’s where I think a financial institution has an important role to play. And also a big role where the regulators and other policy makers have an important role to play.

Denise: I heard you give a talk at the OECD at the end of last year summarizing some of the main challenges that sustainable and green finance are facing. And two that really stood out were the issue of fragmented initiatives and inconsistency of definitions. Could you talk about that and give us an update on where we’re at today?

Daniel: Let me just take a step back. We run an annual survey among investors and issuers on where the state of the market is. And over the last three years, we’ve seen a lot of positive developments here.

More and more investors are going into the space because they believe they can deliver better returns, not just because they believe they have to do it. But at the same time, we do get a very consistent set of barriers. 

The four barriers that we get now every year is… One, actually that’s really easy to fix is lack of knowledge. Not enough finance professionals actually understand what’s happening here and how to assess the risks, how to manage the risk, how to invest in a sustainable finance fashion. 

The second barrier is actually the lack of opportunity. I think that’s really important to understand. We talk about this incredible hundred trillion investment need. But the problem is that a lot of that sits in long dated infrastructure,* not in U.S. dollars. Risks that people are not familiar with. While most of the money sits in U.S. treasuries and would love to invest in liquid, no-risk assets. 

And then I come to number three and four, which are the two that you asked me about.

So I think that the first of those is there’s a big complaint from the investor community that we’re using too many different definitions, but everybody has a slightly different way of explaining what, what is sustainable, what does low carbon mean, what is ESG? And it’s very hard to mobilize money if you actually don’t have a systematic way of tracking,

performance tracking impact and tracking what you’re actually investing in. And the second one is lack of disclosure. We also know that financial markets are normally very, very good in directing  capital when they have good data. But at the moment, we have very little disclosure and the disclosure that we’re getting is very, very inconsistent.

So financial markets can’t really use that information to build products, to mobilize capital, and to do the job that financial markets do best –  use information to allocate capital to return and risk.

*in local currencies (The IEA and the OECD anticipate USD100 trillion of investments into sustainable infrastructure. This includes renewables, clean transport, energy efficiency, water and sanitation.)

Denise: So are you seeing progress on these four areas right now? 

Daniel: So I think we’re seeing progress. There are a lot of initiatives. I think one of the concerns is sometimes that we have too many initiatives, but I think there’s obviously a lot of activity when you think about disclosure for instance. 

Three years ago we really started with the TCFD, the Task force for Climate related Financial Disclosure, at the time driven by Bloomberg and Carney on behalf of the FSB. (Financial Stability Board)

And I think it was a successful initiative in building momentum, and sometimes you need to build momentum first before you can standardize. So we have three years now with a lot of companies, more than a thousand large companies in the world providing disclosure. Now I think it’s time to take a step back and learn.

And if you think about COP 26 which has now been rescheduled to 2021, one of the big topics on the agenda there is how do we standardize and improve disclosure around the world to move it from something that was an experiment that tried to put the relevant information into the hands of investors to something that can really guide a market. 

Similarly on the discussion on how do you mobilize more capital into emerging markets. I think there is an awareness that the model at the moment is not working and that we need better collaboration between private and public sector and between emerging markets and developed markets to mobilize the capital in the direction where it needs to go.

The question is it going fast enough? And again, I think COP26 will have an important role to play, to take what I would call pilots into, into real practice. 

Denise: One question on TCFD. I read very recently that some people are pushing for a similar initiative, but on inequalities.

From your point of view, would this represent a sort of a proliferation and dilution, or is it actually positive to have a more inclusive definition?

Daniel: Yeah, I think a very good question. I would answer this on two levels. I think that the broader ESG agenda, the environmental, social, and governance agenda, I think that agenda is incredibly important.

And, as I said before, I think now COVID actually revealed the companies that are better performing on ESG actually performed better financially in the crisis. So I think there will be a huge push after this, as we come out of the crisis, into ESG and understanding ESG risk and performance better. And some of these topics will fall under the broader ESG banner.

I don’t think we need to invent a taxonomy or a way of reporting for each item on that agenda, but we need to harmonize more what we consider sort of good ESG and you know, the rating agencies are doing a lot of work there. The World Economic Forum has launched an initiative there, so I think there is good work on the way, but we shouldn’t fragment that too much.

Climate is a little bit different because climate, I think represents a true long term fundamental financial risk that the world needs to manage, and therefore, having a special disclosure format on the opportunities and the risks that come out of the climate agenda, I think is important. And therefore I think it justifies that deep dive under the “E” of the ESG agenda into what is TCFD.

Denise: I guess that brings us to … I wanted to talk a little bit about ESG and the risks related to COVID-19. What you talk about there, um, is, is, is I guess it’s a huge challenge, is to maintain the focus on climate as a long term risk that’s not going away in a world where the focus has become very short term because we’re in an emergency.

We’ve seen that investments in wind and solar power are actually going down. And also in green bonds whereas the “S” in ESG is getting a lot of attention and demand and new products are being created around this. What’s your take on this?

Do you think this poses a risk to people’s attention span on climate as a long term risk ? And then a kind of corollary question about the comparison with 2008. 

Daniel: So I don’t think we can judge the market based on three months. I would actually say what we’ve seen over the last few months is really positive. People have adopted the green bond framework, the social bond framework to mobilize a lot of capital to support people in the crisis. So we’ve seen a huge increase in the issuance of social bonds, COVID relief bonds. None of that would have been possible 10 years ago where we didn’t have the frameworks on how to think about  social bonds and impact investments.

So I think actually the last few months were a great example of how that market that was established over the last few years actually helped in the response. But I think the bigger question is how will that unfold over the next few months and years.

I believe you can take a very positive and very negative stance to this.

As you can imagine, I’m in the optimistic camp, but I have a level of scepticism. The reason why I would put a positive spin to this is first of all, I think this crisis showed the importance of resilience, and actually good sustainability in the way you operate as a company, in the way you operate your supply chains, and the way you operate your businesses.

But in particular, the resilience element is important if you go through the debate over the last 24 months. What we are going through at the moment is almost a test case of a physical climate event. Disruption of supply chains, major natural events. What we’re going through at the moment is essentially doing a live test of that. It’s a pandemic, but it’s pretty much one of the scenarios that people are running through as they think about major weather climate events. 

The second reason why I think there is real positive momentum here is if you think about the government debate at the moment and the way people want to use stimulus. In many jurisdictions, there’s a real recognition that this is now the chance to mobilize some of the investments that we wanted to make for many, many years, but weren’t able to. 

This is the mandate for governments to spend, to invest, to end austerity. And I think there’s a real recognition that it’s the chance to invest in the E and in the S of our agenda.

The S is obviously healthcare and social care, but also, I think as we think about stimulus, about rebuilding economies, there will be an incredible focus on. Building back better. As in building infrastructure, giving stimulus in areas where we can actually create industries for the future and, and also improve resilience.

And the third reason why I think there actually is a positive momentum here is if you think about the companies that are currently able to refinance, the companies that are getting consumer attention. A lot of those businesses are aligned with what we like to call the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but more sustainable, more technology-enabled.

And so I think there’s a real case here that this crisis will accelerate this transition that we believe will happen over the next 10-15 years to a much shorter period. 

I’m more in the optimistic camp that this crisis will actually unlock a lot of this change that we have been discussing for quite some time. 

What are the parallels with 2007, 2008? I would agree. We had a big debate about sustainability at the time but then it took us about 10 years to come back to it.

So I think there is a good amount of skepticism. Will the same thing happen? The reason why I think this is different this time is, first of all, the sustainable finance debate has moved on a long way. At the time, we were still a lot more in the corporate social responsibility camp rather than the real financial performance camp where we are now. And second at the time, we had a financial crisis. This time we essentially have an E S and G crisis, right? We have a crisis driven by a natural event. So I think that the situation is different enough that this agenda will actually step up in importance and therefore we’ll come out stronger.

Denise: Can I just go back. You mentioned that the companies that are doing well aligning with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, could you give a few examples of those companies? 

Daniel: So I think there are many different ways of looking at this. The obvious one is technology-enabled businesses. We all know that the next generation companies will be more digital. People will interact more digitally. I think everyone is surprised how well it actually works, to run a global business over video conference. People are obviously shifting radically to online purchases that will transform transport, but also will transform a lot of the businesses and their supply chains. We will see supply chains being shortened again and reduction in global transport. But also when you think about sustainability, I think you see the companies that are more aligned with that future vision of a clean energy, clean transport efficiency, will find it much easier to raise capital.

The company that opened the European debt market after the crisis was a company that issued a green bond. It was a French energy company with a green bond, and I think it’s just a small signal that shows that investors want to back and therefore help those companies accelerate as we come out of this crisis.

Denise: And I wanted to go back to something you said earlier about this crisis is a live test of the physical risk of climate change. I wonder if the crisis is also testing the transition risk aspect of it. So I’m thinking about the oil sector. 

Daniel: For sure. I think both elements are being tested. The physical risk very clearly because this is a perfect scenario of global breakdowns. The transition risk element, I agree with you that the oil price is a bit of a test run for this. This is obviously driven partly by the crisis, partly by let’s say, political interventions in the oil market, but absolutely.

I think It brings to the forefront some of the debates that people are having. How many assets will still be productive if an oil price is at $30, $40, $50. It is probably too early to answer this and to see where the oil price will land after this crisis. But it certainly will put a lot of long term investments into question. People will wait to see where we land.

And as you say, I think this is a very good test case for some of the models that we and others have been building.

Denise: We spoke before this interview, we had a prep call and you mentioned the idea that there are going to be three phases of the COVID-19 crisis. And we’re in the first one. I wanted to ask you maybe to describe those three phases as you see them. I also had a question about the future of globalization. I think a lot of the scenarios that you describe are based on an assumption that we’ll be able to maintain some version of globalization as before. 

Daniel: So let me, let me start with the three phases, the three horizons of the crisis. The way I see it, we’re in phase one, right, it’s the immediate crisis response. It’s making sure that employees have money and food and just making sure there’s liquidity in the market and we don’t see major disruptions. And I think that’s the phase where in particular social welfare was very important and liquidity provided by central banks.

But nothing that has happened so far has really been strategic in the way of thinking of longer term change in stimulus. The second phase will be the response to what happens to companies. As we come out of this immediate crisis, a number of businesses will need to materially refinance, change their business models, will require bailouts. So I think the second phase is really this bailout and making sure the economy comes back into traction. And that I think will be a very important phase to observe. What are the kinds of companies that are getting that money from investors, from governments?

What are the conditions that come with that money? 

And then the third phase is the phase of broader stimulus. Once you’ve sorted out the immediate crisis and you’ve sorted out how companies are getting back into business, there will be the discussion around the world – where do I now need to give extra stimulus to bring people back into work and bring the economy back into motion.

In 2008, that was to a very large degree, big infrastructure investments around the world, and particularly in Asia, but everywhere, there were specific schemes to bring the car industry back to life and other, and other elements. But it was really sort of aimed at major longterm investments that were unlocking GDP growth and employment.

And I think we will see something very similar here in that third phase once we’ve sort of worked through the immediate bailout. Where governments around the world will think, okay, now I have the mandate from the taxpayers, from my voters to actually invest, invest in healthcare resilience, and into bigger economic stimulus. And that’s the phase where this building back better notion will really come to play. 

What will this mean for globalization? I’m a very firm believer that globalization will remain incredibly important. I think the world has proven over the last decades that we are more successful if we work together. And I don’t think any of this will go away, but this crisis will challenge some of the big beliefs in that system, particularly when we think about supply chains and length of supply chains. When we think about dependency on different geographies, people will have to rethink this and consider the impact of  automation with AI and robotics. Also with the changed cost of labor in some of these markets, people will reconsider supply chains that are maybe a bit shorter, that may be more diversified, that may be closer to home, and therefore the form of globalization may look a bit different. But again, as I said, I’m a strong believer. I think the world has largely learned that working together is more successful.

Denise: I’d like to move to a slightly different topic, which is about greening personal finance. I personally find it very frustrating. I’m in France and France is meant to be a kind of a hub of green finance,  and yet as a consumer, if you want to invest your money, at a small scale, it’s very hard to get transparency on the products that are available to you and to know whether you can have fossil free investments. Do you have any thoughts on that? It seems that  green investment is really only, for the moment, the preserve of the very wealthy or the institutional investors.

Daniel: So I would say from a personal finance perspective, we need to look at two layers. The majority of most people’s personal investments are actually sitting in their. pension funds, life insurance, and the like. So I think the most important thing is to make sure that the way those institutions that manage our personal wealth actually invest in a way that the individuals that are invested into these schemes actually support and believe in.

On that level, I think the critical element is, is transparency and better reporting. 

Here in the UK, there’s currently a campaign that says, Make My Money Matter. So making clear to people what it means when my pension fund is invested in ESG or in low carbon.

At HSBC, our default fund is a future generation fund, and it works really well with our staff because people start to realize that the money that I put aside every month actually does something relevant and something good and that that isn’t a given. I think for many, many individuals, it’s not clear that the money I put aside in a life insurance or pension fund actually in the end, gets reinvested and has a real positive impact if it’s done right.

So I think that that is one level. The second level is the more immediate personal banking experience. And I agree that the progress here is very slow. But I also have to say from sitting in a bank, we see very limited interest from customers in this still. So when you ask people in a survey, would you invest more sustainably? Are you interested in ESG? Most people say yes, but we see very, very little interest when it comes to the actual investment decision at this point. I’m convinced that this will come. I think it will be a s econd step of a lot of these public movements that we’ve seen over the last few years. Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg, and the like. But the jump from an individual to connect personal investment decisions with impact, I think is still a really, really long one. And we will need help, I think between media, the financial industry and other stakeholders. We will need to help individuals build that link. It’s a lot more immediate for people to understand that not taking a plastic bag to the supermarket is a good thing, than the personal investment decision and what that does. So I  agree with your observation. What I feel is it isn’t really currently driven by consumer demand and we willl need to create this to change that dynamic.

Denise: I would take issue with that. I actually think that the interest is there and I think it’s a problem of information. You mentioned Make My Money Matter. And I went and looked at that video and they just interview, you know, ordinary people around London. People horrified to discover that their pension fund is tied up in lots of what they would classify as evil or unacceptable businesses.

I find this is actually quite frustrating. If the consumers on the one hand are under informed, the media doesn’t consider it a priority to inform them on this. And the banks on the other side are saying, well, the demand is not there, so we’re not going to do it, it seems like a vicious circle of doom.

Daniel: As I said, I think it requires more collective effort. All I can say is from our own experience putting more product on the shelf and starting to explain to investors, individual investors, about these products didn’t change any of the dynamic. We’ve tried to test this in a number of our markets.

It is very different from interviewing people in a survey or on the street about what they want to do with their money to what they actually do. I can only tell you what our own experience on that is, so I think it needs a lot more work to really unlock this then just to put more stuff on the shelf.

But I agree with the direction of travel because. I think consumers and retail investors need to understand that they actually have a lot of influence here. 

Denise: If I take this one step further, there’s something that’s been puzzling me in the news I’ve been reading about the crisis is, if we as individual citizens, with small amounts of money to invest, take our cue from the sort of the giants of the investment world such as Warren Buffett.

We don’t see a good role model. Warren buffett recently said that he divested himself of airline shares. However, he just sits on his cash and he doesn’t redirect that cash into renewable energy or things like that on it. This is something I find actually quite confusing.

Daniel: But I would come back to my earlier point. I think it is very hard to judge the crisis response in the middle of the crisis. I think the most important period is about to come, and I think the most important period is as we come out of this lockdown as we come out of the crisis, is money flowing into technologies and companies that are more aligned with this.

And I think you do see positive signals here. And as I said before, I think just the fact that these companies actually outperformed. So our research showed that so far, companies that are higher ESG rated outperformed ,companies that are aligned with climate technologies outperformed. And then the bond market, green bonds outperformed the normal bond market. That shows you that actually there is an investor interest.

You also have seen fewer outflows from these types of funds and investments. So I think in the immediate crisis response, at least we can say that people have been withdrawing less money from those types of investments than from others and have experienced a better performance. 

As we come out of this, I would expect that people take a learning from this and actually direct money into those areas. But again, I think, I think the next months are really the critical ones, because in the crisis, the best you can do is actually preserve your investments. As you come out of it, you need to direct it into what the future holds. 

Denise: So I wanted to talk a little bit about change. I wondered if you considered yourself an activist, you know, someone who is actively pushing for change in your field. 

Daniel: I mean, activist has many different connotations at the moment. I probably would use the word change agent. I think the sustainability, in particular, the climate change agenda, is one where you need change agents. I think it’s incredibly important because it is one that works across all the different dimensions of change, right? There’s an emotional element here. There is a rational element. Different brains work differently. And I think if you think about roles that people have in organizations or take my role, you will need to convince different people in different ways.

Some people believe in this topic because they see it as the way to attract future talent. Some people believe in this because they read the economic reports and believe in the future. Some believe in this because they had very transformational customer experiences. And so for me, so the role of a change agent in this is actually making sure that people that have different brains and react to different stimuli actually get that stimulus.

And when I look at the role, at HSBC, I think it was very important to lead this out of the office of the CEO because it is a topic where we look up to leaders. You look at signals. You want to see people that look beyond the quarterly results, that look beyond the annual performance.

I like big transformational change, and I saw this coming. It’s very clear that we are going through a decade that will transform the way the economy works, the world works. As you said, I’m a McKinsey strategist, and so I came to this as a fairly neutral observer, but then very quickly understanding that actually this is one of the biggest transformations for the world.

Denise: You did your PhD, I, I believe on what businesses can learn from private equity firms about diversification of their portfolios. So I guess I have two questions. One is, if you were doing a PhD today, what would the focus be and what would you say to a young person who is embarking on their choice of a PhD today?

Daniel: Yeah. So as you said, I’m an economist by training, I was always interested in big beliefs, in whether you can prove or disprove them. And that’s one of the topics I always find interesting, the different ways of ownership of diversified companies. I wrote my PhD before the last financial crisis where there was an incredible flood of money into private equity and a strong belief that this is the form of better ownership in the form of better management.

And so I wanted to prove this point or disprove it. My research showed that actually it’s true on average. But I want to get more confidence that actually this mass phenomenon actually had evidence behind it. If I would do it now, I would probably look at what we talked about today.

Is it true that companies that are aligned with some of these future themes, is it true that companies that are performing better on ESG, are, actually in the end performing better? Or is this just something we want to believe in. Because I think that’s really, really important. This crisis is the first time that we’re testing the narrative that we’ve built up over the last five to 10 years.

We’ve built up that narrative that companies that are more responsible are companies that are better managed, are companies that will actually come through a crisis better. We’re now in the middle of it and we are trying to build that evidence. So probably that will be a topic I would love to pick up and do a bit more bit more work on.

If I think about broader, students going into this, I would always just say it is great to look into a topic that will shape the next decade or decades. 

So looking at this part of the industry and how it transforms finance in a similar way to people looking at the power of digital and technology transforming certain industries. I think is always something that I’m passionate about and I would advise other people because it’s much more interesting to be aligned with a topic of the future than with a topic of the past.

Denise: Thank you very much. Thanks a lot, Daniel for coming on the show. It was a pleasure to have you. 

Daniel: It was a real pleasure. Thank you for having me. 

That’s it for this episode, thanks for listening to New Climate Capitalism.

If you enjoyed the conversation, please follow us on Twitter @NewClimateCap. Many thanks to Valentine Scherer and Victoria Yates for their help making this episode.

If you’d like to hear more from Daniel, you can find him on Twitter @DanielOKlier. You can also find the show notes and other resources at the website climatenarratives.co.

Our theme song is by Lucas Laufen. 

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