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Category: Corporate Risk Assessments
Newsletter: Towards Adaptation Standards
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January 15, 2019 – 427 REPORT. Building resilient communities and financial systems requires an understanding of climate risk exposure, but also of how prepared communities are to manage that risk. Understanding the adaptive capacity, or ability to prepare for change and leverage opportunities, of the surrounding area can help businesses and investors determine how exposure to climate risk is likely to impact their assets and what the most strategic responses may be. This report outlines Four Twenty Seven’s framework for creating location-specific actionable assessments of adaptive capacity to inform business and investment decisions and catalyze resilience-building.
Every investment, from real assets to corporate initiatives, is inextricably connected to its surrounding community. From flooded or damaged public infrastructure hindering employee and customer commutes to competition for water resources threatening business operations and urban heat reducing public health, the impacts of climate change on a community will impact the businesses and real estate investors based in that community. Thus, evaluating how acute and chronic physical climate hazards will affect local communities and communities’ responses enables investors and corporations to assess the full extent of the risks they face.
This report, Assessing Local Adaptive Capacity to Understand Corporate and Financial Climate Risks, outlines Four Twenty Seven’s framework for capturing a city’s adaptive capacity in a way that’s actionable for corporations seeking to understand the risk and resilience of their own facilities and for investors assessing risk in their portfolios or screening potential investments. The framework focuses on three main pillars: 1) awareness, 2) economic and financial characteristics, and 3) the quality of adaptation planning and implementation. It is informed by social sciences research, recent work by credit rating agencies, and our experience working directly with cities and investors.
While a city’s adaptive capacity plays a key role in determining whether or not exposure to climate hazards will lead to damage and loss, cities are also likely to find that their resilience to climate impacts is an increasingly important factor in attracting business and financing, as adaptive capacity is more frequently integrated into credit ratings and screening processes. It is valuable for both cities to understand how investors are interpreting adaptive capacity and for investors to understand which factors of local adaptive capacity translate into increased resilience and reduced financial loss for their assets.
Key Takeaways
Four Twenty Seven Wins Risk Markets Technology AwardNOVEMBER 27, 2018 – LONDON, UK – Four Twenty Seven Wins Risk Markets Technology Award for Alternative Data Vendor of the Year for 2019.
Investors who wish to develop a fully-informed view of their portfolios need forward-looking data on the impacts of climate change on corporations and public issuers that incorporate the most recent developments in climate science. Risk Magazine recognized Four Twenty Seven’s work to fill this void. “Rapid intensification of the effects of both acute climate events like hurricanes and wildfires and chronic effects like sea level rise and increases in temperatures present an increasingly meaningful type of exposure for investors,” said Emilie Mazzacurati, Four Twenty Seven Founder and CEO. “This risk is currently only priced into the market ex post – we see corrections in asset prices in the wake of events only to the extent that their exposure to these events is known.” Four Twenty Seven helps firms price the risk ex ante by extracting data from global climate models and other scientific datasets to project asset-level risk exposure to a number of hazards, including hurricane-force winds, sea level rise, flooding, heat stress and water stress. Four Twenty Seven’s database of risk exposures, now scores over one million corporate facilities representing 2,000 of the worlds largest companies, combining exposure with detailed data on market and supply chain characteristics. “Our data is catalyzing change across the financial sector,” said Mazzacurati. “Our analytics help leading investors and corporations understand climate change’s impact on their assets and take steps to reduce this risk by investing in resilience.” Four Twenty Seven’s clients include pension funds, asset managers, corporations, development banks and regulators, who use our analytics to understand risks in their existing portfolios, assess risks of potential asset acquisitions and engage with management teams to build resilience in supply chains and physical assets. Download the 2019 Risk Markets Technology Awards Announcement. Read Risk Magazine’s article. Four Twenty Seven Received ISAR HonoursOCTOBER 24, 2018 – GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Four Twenty Seven received ISAR Honours for asset-level climate risk scores.
ISAR Honours recognized Four Twenty Seven’s contribution to developing best practices on corporate reporting. The Intergovernmental Working Group of Exports on International Standards of Accounting and Reporting (ISAR) supports progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by fostering corporate transparency, good governance and sustainability standards. Its awards aim to foster the dissemination of initiatives that improve global corporate reporting and integrate environmental, social and governance factors into reporting cycles. ISAR is convened through The United Nations Conference on Trade and Developments (UNCTAD). “Four Twenty serves governments and cities, corporations and financial institutions,” Four Twenty Seven’s Director, Europe, Nathalie Borgeaud said during the awards ceremony. “We inform about the physical climate risks they incur. We inform about floods, cyclones and sea level rise and we inform about extreme heat and droughts, for each of their assets, with forward-looking, science-driven data. In order for all to develop meaningful resilience strategies, we inform about the future that is knocking on our door. And we all know it is knocking hard.” ———————- Explore Four Twenty Seven’s award-winning equity risk scores and other climate data analytics that enable investors, corporations and governments to understand climate risk exposure and build resilience. PRI Webinar: Measuring and Managing Physical Climate RiskThis PRI webinar, hosted in conjunction with DWS, discusses recent research in identifying physical climate risks and integrating this information into investment decisions. DWS shares its process for leveraging Four Twenty Seven’s equity risk scores to create a climate-optimized index. Speakers
Newsletter: Japan’s Floods Halt Manufacturing
Time and Tides – Flooding in JapanJuly 15, 2018 – 427 ANALYSIS: Record-setting rains in Japan led to floods and landslides that disrupted business operations of automobile manufacturers, electronic companies and others. Understanding the ownership and operations of facilities located in the damaged areas provides insight into what companies and industries may exhibit downturns in performance over the near term and be vulnerable to similar storms in the future. Japan was the inundated by over 70 inches of rain in early July, an event that resulted in significant loss of life and business disruptions. The clouds have since receded, leaving economic damage with long-term implications yet to be understood. However, estimates expect industry losses to be in the billions USD. Destruction was centered in Okayama and Hiroshima, driven by flooding and landslides. Typhoons Prapiroon and Maria contributed to this rainfall and climate scientists expect a warmer climate to increase the severity of these storms. Japan has fewer preparations in place for floods than it does for other extreme events, and understanding the various manifestations of risk caused by extreme rainfall is essential to mitigating damage in the future. Much of Okayama sits immediately below mountains, which makes it particularly exposed to devastating landslides following significant rainfall events. Bursting pipes and power outages led over 250,000 homes in the Okayama and Hiroshima Prefectures to go without water for several days after the floods. Landslides destroyed homes and exacerbated infrastructure damage caused by flooding. Many business operations were severely impacted by these events as well, and some facilities remain closed. Companies such as Panasonic experienced physical damage due to flooded facilities, and others were impacted by damaged infrastructure and communities, impacting their supply chains and workforce. Okayama and Hiroshima are centers of economic activity for a number of key sectors in Japan, hosting production facilities for auto manufacturing, consumer electronics, retail trade and others. The figure below highlights the concentration of facilities of companies in the auto manufacturing industry by the sector of their operations. Companies that rely heavily on manufacturing operations are particularly vulnerable to flooding due in part to their utilization of expensive equipment that can easily incur water damage.
The heavy rainfalls showed no favorites in their disruption of manufacturing facilities across industries. For example, Mitsubishi and Mazda halted operations at some factories during the storms, due in part to supply chain disruptions. Many companies were also forced to pause operations because employees couldn’t get to work. While Mazda’s headquarters in Hiroshima Prefecture and a production facility in Yamaguchi Prefecture weren’t damaged themselves, they remained closed after the storms until employees could return to work safely. Likewise IHI Corp. closed its No. 2 Kure factory in Hiroshima because of water shortages and employees’ commute challenges. The extent of long-term economic impacts that these companies will bear in the aftermath of last week’s storms is not yet known, but merits ongoing examination as the region recovers. Understanding the location of a corporation’s facilities and their exposure to extreme weather events is a key starting point for gauging exposure, and therefore can be instrumental in understanding company’s future performance. Four Twenty Seven’s extensive facility level database can help investors proactively identify their portfolio companies’ exposures both to chronic climate effects and to individual extreme weather events such as the extreme rainfall that beset Okayama and Hiroshima. This deeper understanding can drive better risk-return tradeoffs, and importantly, shareholder engagement strategies that foster investments in resilience. Responding to Economic Climate Risk in AustraliaJune 25, 2018 – 427 REPORT. Regulatory pressure and financial damage are necessitating an increase in physical climate risk disclosure in Australia. In exercising their own due diligence and assessing the exposure to physical climate risks in their portfolios, investors arm themselves with valuable information on corporate risk exposure which they can leverage to engage with companies around resilience. This report explores the connection between climate hazards and financial risks and shares examples of corporate adaptation and investor engagement to build resilience.
Key Findings
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