Dear Colleagues and Friends,

It is our pleasure to invite you to attend the 18th International Conference on Credit Risk Evaluation Designed for Institutional Targeting in finance.

The objective of the Conference is to bring together academics, practitioners and PhD students working in the area of risk management. The conference this year focuses on Assessing and Managing Climate Change Risk: Opportunities for Financial Institutions and will provide an opportunity for participants engaged in research at the forefront of this area to discuss both the causes and implications of recent financial and atmospheric events and may, in turn, suggest fruitful directions for future research. The Conference is the eighteenth of a series dedicated to various aspects of credit risk.

The co-sponsors of the Conference are GRETA Associati (Venice, Italy), Cattolica Assicurazioni (Verona, Italy), European DataWarehouse (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), Intesa Sanpaolo (Milan, Italy) and S&P Global Market Intelligence (London, UK). The Conference is organised under the auspices of the Department of Economics of the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice, ABI - Italian Banking Association, AIAF - Associazione Italiana per l'Analisi Finanziaria (Milan, Italy) and Joint Research Center, European Commission (Ispra, Italy).

The adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate change and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development marks a historical international commitment to the objective of a more sustainable economy and society. How to mobilise the necessary financing for green and sustainable investments is thus a primary need.

Meanwhile, Regulators are discussing about a green-supporting or a brown-penalising factor since they want to make sure financial institutions are prepared. It is to find the way to support sustainable investments but it is primarily a discussion about credit risk.

The banking and insurance industries and more in general the financial sector has to develop new asset management strategies and to adjust their credit allocation practices to cope with these new challenges and take advantage of the new opportunities. All these changes call for a substantial amount of research to improve the knowledge of the mechanisms at play and to design adapted policy tools.

The organizers encourage submissions of papers on any topic within the overall theme of the conference and in the following areas in particular:

• Analysis of climate change effects on companies’ creditworthiness, in terms of risk exposure and possible loss of business continuity; understanding on how to integrate the environmental risk and opportunities of banks’ or insurers’ counterparties in the credit process
• Development of metrics for climate-related financial risks and investments opportunities; definition of an EU environmental and climate change (ECC) risk categorising system by economic sectors/sub-sectors for ECC screening to provide a sound and reliable basis for setting high-level policies for credit protection and allocation
• Analysis of the climate change impact on the insurance sector and on the development of non-life and reinsurance products for the corporate and retail segments
• Analysis of climate-aligned developments in the financial markets (e.g. green bonds) and opportunities for financial institutions in fostering the low-carbon transition
• Transmission channels of climate-related shocks from the real economy to financial institutions’ portfolios and amplification mechanisms of climate-related shocks through credit chains
• Assessment of the potential impact of green financial policies, including climate-aligned monetary policies and macroprudential regulation
• Big data and artificial intelligence to assess and manage the corporate exposures to climate change factors.

The final program will include both submitted and invited papers. Acceptances received so far from invited speakers include Robert Engle (New York University), Andreas Hoepner (University College Dublin) Irene Monasterolo (Vienna University of Economics and Business) and Til Schuermann (Oliver Wyman, New York). The Conference will also feature two panel discussions on researchers', practitioners' and policy makers’ views of the major outstanding problems.

The Scientific Committee

Carlo Carraro, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice & Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, Programme Chair

Stefano Battiston, University of Zurich

Monica Billio, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice & GRETA

Francesca Campolongo, Joint Research Center, European Commission

Robert Engle, New York University

Thomas Heller, Climate Policy Initiative & Stanford University

Andreas Hoepner, University College Dublin

Steven Ongena, University of Zurich, Swiss Finance Institute, Lausanne, KU Leuven & CEPR

Stephen Schaefer, London Business School

Cristiano Zazzara, S&P Global Market Intelligence

The Local Organisers

Lucia Alessi, Joint Research Center, European Commission

Davide Alfonsi, Intesa Sanpaolo

Marco Angheben, European DataWarehouse

Monica Billio, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice & GRETA

Andrea Giacomelli, Knowshape & GRETA

Domenico Sartore, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice & GRETA