APRA seeks greater focus on climate risk
Climate risk is becoming a bigger part of financial regulation with the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) seeking analysts for a climate risk team.
In a recruitment post, the body said it was seeking to hire analysts who would be responsible for providing advice on climate risk to support APRA’s policy and supervision activity across banking, superannuation and insurance.
They would also play a key role in ensuring regulated entities managed the financial risks of a changing climate, promote best practice on climate risk, co-ordinate APRA’s response to relevant international work and develop APRA’s policy framework in relation to climate risks.
“Climate change presents financial risks, as well as provides for new business opportunities, to all APRA-regulated entities. In response, APRA seeks to increase industry resilience to climate risk, and to ensure effective action is taken to manage these risks.
“The Climate Risk team provides expert advice on the management of climate change financial risks, spanning three areas: core activities including support to APRA supervisors, domestic and international engagement; industry initiatives to support understanding and assessment of climate risk; and quantitative climate risk analysis. Its key focus areas are the understanding, governance, management and disclosure of these risks by APRA-regulated institutions.”
Earlier this year, APRA carried out a climate risk self-assessment survey of banking, insurance and super which found climate risk was an “emerging discipline” compared to other traditional risk areas.
Only a small proportion of respondents, APRA said, had fully embedded climate risk across their risk management frameworks and almost 40% said climate-related events could have a ‘material’ or ‘moderate’ impact on their direct operations.
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