Press Release: Climate & Company launches just transition finance pilot with Standard Life, Swedbank Robur, and ÖKOWORLD

Climate & Company, leading sustainable finance and environmental policy think tank, launches a new pilot programme to help investors integrate social and climate risks into their investment processes. The pilot involves Standard Life, Swedbank Robur and ÖKOWORLD who combine more than 580 billion euros of assets under management. The programme is supported by a High-Level Advisory Board.

Climate and social risks are usually managed in silos. There is currently no shared operational understanding of “just transition finance” and investors need concrete implementation guidance. This pilot will help close that gap. Together with the participating investors, Climate & Company will co-develop methodologies that embed just transition into due diligence, stewardship, transition planning and financial product development.

The pilot brings on board investors who combine more than 580 billion euros of assets under management: The UK retirement specialist Standard Life; Swedbank Robur, Sweden’s largest fund management company;​ and ÖKOWORLD, since 1996 a pioneering green asset manager from Germany.

Structured in two phases, the pilot programme mirrors how investors approach risk management:

• Pilot A: Sector-agnostic portfolio screening. A scalable approach to identifying material just transition risks across listed equity portfolios.
• Pilot B: Sector-specific deep dive. An in-depth analysis of just transition issues of companies in a high-risk priority sector, building on Pilot A’s findings.

The pilot is part of Climate & Company’s project, “Making Just Transition Finance Work in Practice”, funded by the Laudes foundation.

“There is already excellent guidance and thought leadership on just transition finance, including the recently published IIGCC guidance for investors,” says Malte Hessenius, Transition Finance & Data Lead at Climate & Company. “The next challenge is implementation: how can investors translate these concepts into concrete portfolio analysis, stewardship priorities or transition planning? That is exactly what we want to co-develop and test with participating investors.”

“Climate and social issues do not exist in isolation. For long-term investors, understanding how they interact is key to better assessing risks and opportunities”, says Pia Gisgard, Head of Sustainability & Corporate Governance at Swedbank Robur. “We are pleased to contribute to developing practical approaches that support investment processes and engagement with companies.”

“ÖKOWORLD participates in this initiative because we believe that a just transition must go hand in hand with the protection and continuous advancement of internationally recognized human rights, workers’ rights and diversity”, says Verena Kienel, Head of Sustainability Research at ÖKOWORLD. “This has always been at the heart of our investment philosophy, which integrates ecological, social and ethical considerations and seeks to support companies that not only uphold minimum social standards but continuously improve working conditions throughout their value chains.”

A High-Level Advisory Board to keep the methodology credible and scalable

Complementary to the investors as implementation partners, the pilot programme will be guided by a High-Level Advisory Board. Its Members will provide critical and constructive input on the design of the pilots, their methodology, and their outputs. They will focus on usability and credibility and ensure alignment with evolving market practices and regulatory expectations.

“When you develop a methodology in this space, the biggest risk is building something that looks rigorous on paper but does not survive contact with practice, or that ignores the significant work that experts, investors, and policymakers have already done on just transition. Our Advisory Board is our safeguard against that,” says Louise Simon, EU Policy & Due Diligence Lead at Climate & Company. “It ensures that what we produce is genuinely grounded in the best available knowledge, in how financial institutions actually operate, and in the direction, policy is moving – not just in one jurisdiction, but across the markets where our pilot investors work.”

Advisory Board members (in alphabetical order):

• Arka Chanda (Policy Analyst, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) – Just Transition Finance Lab (JTFL))
• Yidan Chen (Research Analyst – Benchmarking & Insights, World Benchmarking Alliance)
• Claire Dugan (Senior Manager of Financial Services Sector Standards, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI))
• Unwanna Etuk (Manager, Shareholder Engagement on Just Transition, Ceres)
• Petter Forslund (Engagement Manager, Andra AP-fonden (AP2) and the Platform Living Wage Financials)
• Sara Heinsbroek (Project Manager Sustainability & Responsible Investment, VBDO)
• Noah Mardirossian (Senior Adviser on Human Rights, Tech and Business, Danish Institute for Human Rights)
• Jana Mudronova (Senior Technical Specialist, Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosures (TISFD))
• Paloma Munoz (Director for Human Rights Standards, BSR)
• Erica Lasdon (Program Director for Climate Change & Environmental Justice, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR))
• Paul Rissman (Co-founder, Rights CoLab)
• Joachim Roth (Lead of the Just Transition Working Group of the French SIF)
• Ana Maria Uribe Restrepo (Senior Specialist, Stewardship, Human Rights & Social Issues, UN PRI)
• Elena Vydrine (Senior Investment Specialist – Public Markets, IIGCC)

Timeline & Project Information

The pilot programme kicks off in July 2026 with the first Advisory Board and investor meetings.  The co-development and testing of the two pilots are expected to happen over the next 12 months. Final outputs, including practical methodologies, implementation guidance, case studies, and online tools, will be launched at a public event in mid-2027.

For more information about the project, visit our project page.

About Climate & Company

Climate & Company is a Berlin and Brussels-based sustainable finance and environmental policy think tank. Together with partners in more than 25 countries, Climate & Company co-develops policy and data solutions with regulators and market actors and tests them in real-world situations at the critical choking points of value chains. Previously Climate & Company co-developed and piloted the first free portfolio-wide methodology for assessing deforestation risk in financial portfolios with the Swedish Pension Fund Andra AP-fonden (AP2).

About Standard Life

Standard Life is a retirement specialist focused entirely on retirement saving and income. We are proud to manage around c£317bn in assets on behalf of our 12 million customers, and we champion the belief that everyone’s journey to and through retirement can be better.

With our focus entirely on retirement savings and income we want to be the business that people trust to guide their retirement journey, helping our customers achieve better outcomes and greater financial security in later life.

As a FTSE 100-listed group we are using our size, expertise and influence to shape the world our customers will retire into, and are committed to helping three million customers by 2035, take action towards a better retirement.

Standard Life is a responsible investor with a clear commitment to supporting a more sustainable future. The company has achieved its net zero goal across its emissions for 2025 and is working towards net zero investment portfolios by 2050 or sooner.

About Swedbank Robur

Swedbank Robur is a wholly owned subsidiary to Swedbank and active in Swedbank´s four home markets. They were founded in 1967 and offers more than 80 mutual funds, institutional and discretionary asset management, and management of pension funds. The number of customers is 3 million in Sweden and 1 million in the Baltic countries. Swedbank Robur’s vision is to become a world leader in sustainable value creation.

About ÖKOWORLD

ÖKOWORLD has been one of the leading providers of sustainable investment solutions since 1996. Their investment funds invest exclusively in companies that have passed a thorough assessment of key environmental, ethical and social criteria by the ÖKOWORLD in-house sustainability research team.