One of the objectives of CGFI is to nurture and support a vibrant ecosystem of enterprises providing climate and environmental analytics (CEA) built on robust science. This will ultimately fulfil the potential for the UK to become a world-leader in the creation and provision of CEA products and services.

The demand for climate and environmental data from financial institutions is growing rapidly. While the last decade has seen the exponential growth of CEA data, as well as improved analytics and methods, often produced by world-leading UK science, the vast majority of this has not found its way into financial institutions’ decision-making.

Academic research outputs are not often directly digestible by financial institutions and commercialising new science has also proven challenging, limiting accessibility of innovation, even within a large, growing and profitable market such as the one for financial data. If some of these accessibility and translation barriers can be overcome, this represents a major opportunity both to generate a vibrant and world-leading ecosystem of UK enterprises providing CEA and to enhance the competitive positioning and sustainability of the UK financial sector. 

CGFI will act as a platform to connect wider UK science and innovation with financial institutions, providing a route by which needs are understood and the latest climate and environmental science is made accessible, commercialised, and exported globally, placing the UK as global hub for climate and environmental analytics for financial institutions. We will do this by:

• Connecting industries and networks across environmental science and finance
• Knowledge exchange and raising the bar on application
• Stimulating new ideas and early stage business support

Our CGFI Innovation Hubs in Leeds and London will be meeting points for researchers, analytics businesses and financial services practitioners to connect and collaborate. They will be hosting networking events, workshops, challenge competitions and more.