The Centre for Sustainable Finance wins the “Best Pedagogical Initiative” prize at the 17th FIR-PRI Awards
The SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance won the “Best Pedagogical Initiative” prize for “Transition Risk Stress-test Simulation” at the 17th edition of the FIR-PRI Awards. The FIR-PRI Awards for Finance & Sustainable Development are awarded annually by the Forum pour l’Investissement Responsible and the UN Principles for Responsible Investment.
The 2022 Award of the Best Pedagogical initiative went to Dr Jakob Thomä, Professor of Practice for Sustainable Finance at the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance, for an innovative climate transition risk stress-test simulation. The stress-test simulation is an excel-based simulation game designed to train participants in the decision-making process underpinning the implementation of climate stress-tests in banks. The simulation has been applied as part of the SOAS Green Finance course, a capacity building workshop for UK and Chinese financial institutions, and capacity building programmes that the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance convened for the Malaysian central bank and the ten ASEAN central banks.
Prof Jakob Thomä said:
“It is such an honour to receive this award. Over the past 10 years, sustainable finance has helped to disrupt capital markets. It is in this spirit that we should also disrupt the way we teach sustainable finance, which is what our stress-test simulation tries to do. I am so excited to continue to bring this innovation to SOAS and the broader community.”
Professor Ulrich Volz, the Director of the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance, said:
“This award is a wonderful recognition for the stress test simulation developed by Jakob. We have applied it several times now at SOAS and in capacity building programmes for central banks. Our SOAS Masters students loved it, as did central bankers and supervsiors. It really helps to illustrate how climate stress tests work in practice and what choices need to be made in designing them.”
The FIR-PRI Awards 2022 ceremony will take place on Tuesday 4 October in Paris.
A description of the transition risk stress-test simulation can be found online.
All award-winning works and Jury composition are available on the Awards website.
