Dr Jakob Thomae

Dr Jakob Thomä is Managing Director of the 2° Investing Initiative and Senior Fellow at the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance. Jakob co-founded the 2° Investing network in New York and Berlin and manages the think tank’s research on climate scenario analysis for financial institutions and companies, as well as the research portfolio on long-term financial supervision. Jakob led the development of the first climate scenario analysis tool for financial portfolios, which has been applied by more than 800 financial institutions worldwide. In addition, he leads the organisation’s partnerships with a number of financial supervisors and governments. Jakob is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Japanese Financial Services Agency and serves on the Advisory Committee of the International Network for Sustainable Financial Policy Insights, Research, and Exchange (INSPIRE), a global research stakeholder of the Central Banks and Supervisors Network for Greening the Financial System. Jakob has served in senior advisory roles to a range of financial supervisors on climate risk stress-testing, including the California Insurance Commissioner, the European Insurance and Occupational Pension Authority, and the Bank of England. He also advises large international banks with collectively over $20 trillion in assets on their climate strategies, most notably the “Katowice Banks” – a group of banks that committed at COP24 in Katowice to align their lending portfolios with global climate goals. Jakob obtained a PhD in Finance from the Conservatoire National des Arts et Mètiers in Paris, a Dual Masters degree in International Energy from Sciences Po Paris and Beijing University, and a B.A. Turkish and Economics (First Honours) from SOAS. At SOAS, Jakob has been teaching on a postgraduate module in Green Finance and served as a co-convenor of the SOAS Summer School in Sustainable Finance and Climate Change.