Systemic Risk and Investor Engagement on Policy with Richard Roberts

Systemic climate risk is increasingly recognized across capital markets but how should institutional investors engage with the policy drivers shaping that risk?

In this episode of the Future of Finance podcast, host Georges Dyer speaks with Richard Roberts, Inquiry Lead at Volans, about the intersection of systemic risk, fiduciary duty, and investor engagement on real-economy climate policy.

For long-horizon asset owners, disclosure frameworks alone may not address the structural economic forces influencing portfolio outcomes. Energy systems, infrastructure policy, industrial strategy, and trade dynamics ultimately determine emissions pathways and market stability.

Key themes include:

• The imbalance between disclosure-focused engagement and real-economy policy
• Systemic risk across diversified portfolios
• Catastrophic risk and the limits of economic modeling
• Coalition-based approaches to policy engagement
• Governance structures and long-term stewardship incentives

For CIOs, trustees, and policy leaders, the conversation explores whether policy engagement is becoming a necessary dimension of systemic stewardship.

Resources Mentioned:

Recalibrating Carbon Risk: https://carbontracker.org/reports/recalibrating-climate-risk/

Triple Bottom Line Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2018/06/25-years-ago-i-coined-the-phrase-triple-bottom-line-heres-why-im-giving-up-on-it

Existential Politics - Jessica F. Green: https://share.google/RLMhxwaxpSnWvhqAj

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction

03:10 Disclosure vs. Real-Economy Policy

08:00 Investor Resource Allocation Findings

14:20 Political Legitimacy and Engagement Constraints

19:40 Coalition Strategies and Collective Action

26:35 Fiduciary Duty and Systemic Risk

32:10 Catastrophic Risk and Tipping Points

47:45 A Long-Term Vision for Finance