Hymans Robertson has over 100 years’ experience helping clients with decisions that have real and direct consequences on their financial futures. The firm offers independent pensions, investments, benefits and risk consulting services, as well as data and technology solutions. More recently, climate change has become a strategic imperative for the firm as it supports the Paris Agreement goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, or sooner.

Our aim is to offer well-supported, actionable advice on climate risk and net-zero investment strategies to our clients, which safeguards their financial futures. This is not a straightforward task. Success will be defined by future events that are outside our control. While this has always been the case, and we have well-developed tools for managing financial risks, it is possible that the risks posed by a changing climate are fundamentally different to anything we have seen before.

When we look to the future, there are many models for the expected outcome, but data informing them are sparse and noisy. In addition, such data do not necessarily fit within our existing modelling framework. In this context, statistical models are of limited value, even though quantitative analysis is still crucial for decision making.

In this presentation, we outline Hymans’ approach to tackling these issues, which combines empirical data and statistical models to construct narrative-based scenario analyses.

Technical Level: Introductory level/students (some technical knowledge needed)