Finance
New transition finance playbook offer tips for financial institutions | Investment Executive
It also considers current market realities such as a shortage of high-emitting companies with robust transition plans, the lack of high-quality and consistent metrics available to assess such plans, and no clear definition of what transition finance activity entails.
“There is no universal approach to transition finance,” said Yingzhi Tang, one of the lead authors of the playbook and a senior research associate with the ISF.
“That is where our playbook comes into play, to lay out a range of approaches, allowing financial institutions to select the path that best suits their mandate and context.”
The playbook offers 14 tips and provides some practical examples from the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) and the Co-operators Group. The three institutions helped develop the recommendations.
The list of tips starts with a recommendation to get “the top level” of a financial institution involved, Tang said, referring to senior executives. The playbook says securing support at the senior level can be done by presenting a business case about how transition finance can allow an institution to create value and manage risks.
Another tip is to leverage third-party taxonomies and frameworks to come up with an in-house definition for transition finance and clearly communicate which frameworks that definition is based on. For example, it notes that OMERS developed its in-house climate taxonomy by drawing on external frameworks such as the International Capital Markets Association’s Green Bond Principles and Climate Bonds Initiative Taxonomy.
Acknowledging that high-emitting companies are still in the early stages of decarbonizing, the playbook further recommends using a range of metrics to track their progress. This includes emissions intensity metrics, which measure the emissions produced for each unit of activity or output, and temperature scores, which estimate the global temperature rise associated with a company’s emissions or those of a portfolio.
Other recommendations include segmenting portfolios based on “transition maturity” to gauge which investments are further along in supporting a transition to a low-carbon economy and which require more progress, embedding decarbonization targets in underwriting strategies and collaborating with policymakers to drive further action.
“It is very much going step by step through the investment cycle,” Tang said.
The new playbook comes on the heels of the launch of Business Future Pathways, an initiative that seeks to encourage Canadian financial institutions and companies to develop credible climate transition plans. That initiative is also supported by the ISF.
Tang said the playbook and Business Future Pathways are intended to work hand in hand to propel Canada toward its target of achieving net zero by 2050. As it stands, it’s estimated that the country is short $115 billion a year in transition-aligned investments to achieve that target.
“Those activities make up the whole puzzle of deploying capital credibly to those assets with robust transition plans,” she said.
“It’s extremely important for Canadian financial institutions to manage climate-related financial risks and capture long-term value in the transition to net zero.”
IE was a media sponsor of the RIA Conference.
Finance
Low-income Chinese girl aces gaokao, inspires live-streamers offering help
A girl from a disadvantaged rural family in central China topped this year’s gaokao, attracting numerous live-streamers eager to finance her education, which she declined.
The home of 18-year-old secondary school graduate Han Yaping in a Henan province village was recently bustling with live-streamers.
This attention came after Han achieved an impressive score of 699 out of 750 in the gaokao, China’s national college entrance exam.
She has received offers from China’s two leading universities, Tsinghua University and Peking University.
Han’s accomplishment is particularly remarkable given her family’s impoverished circumstances.
Her mother suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory arthritis affecting the spine, preventing her from working. Her father, who earns a living through farming and odd jobs, serves as the family’s sole provider. Han also has a younger sister.
Finance
UK financial regulator publishes landmark AI review
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a landmark review on Monday that proposes recommendations to regulate the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the financial decisions made by consumers.
The review, titled the Mills Review, anticipates that both consumers and firms will start delegating “more financial decision-making to AI systems,” including for agreements, initiating transactions, and executing decisions “within agreed parameters.” One of the key findings of the review outlined that while AI can help bridge advice gaps and “support growth,” there remain risks “associated with fraud, cyber security, and consumer harm.” Conducting the review, Sheldon Mills highlighted that “AI can also amplify risks: bias, discrimination, exclusion, opaque decision-making (particularly when multiple AI models interact), misleading or hallucinatory advice and erosion of consumer trust.”
The review stated that presently, one in five adults in the UK are “already open to AI making decisions for them,” particularly when decisions feel “complex or high stakes.” It found that roughly 26 percent of the population “trust general-purpose tools such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini for financial advice” with little awareness that such platforms provide no “formal routes to recourse” or protections.
Overall, the Mills Review identified four areas that it anticipates will be impacted by AI in the financial sector: “the transformation of firms,” “new consumer journeys,” “a reshaped competition landscape,” and “amplified financial crime and cyber risk.” The FCA projected the shift in how consumers and firms consult AI to take place by 2030.
The Mills Review put forth seven “priority” recommendations to be considered by the FCA Board. It recommended that any transitions to autonomous AI models be monitored and that regulatory frameworks and perimeters be adapted and secured. The review called for the strengthening of “system-wide coordination and oversight,” the scaling up of the FCA’s AI Lab to enable it to support AI models and innovation for agentic finance, and an “AI-enabled agentic supervisory model” to be built and adopted. Finally, it recommended that a trusted “public-interest AI-enabled financial capability service” be developed.
The FCA announced, in the press release, that it will launch an AI “good and poor practice publication” in late 2026.
Finance
Fayette County Public Schools Board of Education approves audit contract, new finance director position
LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – The Fayette County Public Schools Board of Education approved a one-year audit contract capped at $131,750 plus $225 per hour during a virtual meeting Monday, along with a new finance director job description.
The contract is with Mauldin & Jenkins Certified Public Accountants, an Atlanta-based firm, and covers the 2025-26 fiscal year and the restatement of the 2024-25 fiscal year and ancillary services through FY 2029-2030. The work is set to be completed by Nov. 15.
The board approved the contract in a 5-0 vote.
Audit contract details
Interim Chief Financial Officer Kyna Koch said the cost is already accounted for in the district’s budget.
“And is actually less than we expected given our current situation — we were thrilled with the bid,” Koch said.
Koch said she believes this is Mauldin & Jenkins’ first school district audit in Kentucky, but that the firm works with school districts of more than 100,000 students throughout the Southeast.
“Quite frankly when I spoke to the folks at KDE they were thrilled because we’re running kind of short of auditors who want to do school district audits — so all around I think this was a win-win for everyone,” Koch said.
New finance director position
The board also approved a new job description for the position of Director of Finance. Acting Superintendent Dr. Bill Bradford said the title will replace two associate director positions.
“Which will not only save the school district money but it’s also going to streamline our work and align internal controls to make room for a more efficient unit,” Bradford said.
Koch said the position will be posted as soon as possible following the board’s approval.
Closed session
The board went into closed session for more than an hour to discuss pending investigations that could lead to employee discipline. When the board returned, it took no action and adjourned the meeting.
Copyright 2026 WKYT. All rights reserved.
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