Practical tips on carbon accounting in financial services

Adam Beasant, Director, climate change assurance (insurance), PwC
Adam leads ESG assurance for PwC's Insurance audit practice and has over 20 years audit experience. He is passionate about the ESG agenda and is helping a number of companies in the insurance sector understand what the new global sustainability requirements mean for their organisation, as well as how they best provide their stakeholders the confidence they are looking for in what gets reported.

Atul Patel, Director Climate Change (Banking) PwC
Atul leads PwC’s sustainability reporting assurance for banking & capital markets. Atul has over 15 years of experience focused on sustainability reporting and assurance. He has worked with a broad range organisations and their stakeholders to develop appropriate frameworks and organisational arrangements to monitor, review and report upon their performance, including independent assurance.

Atul’s experience in the financial services sector is underpinned by his sustainability related reporting and assurance experience with FMCG, business services and extractive industry sector organisations. Atul provides advice and guidance to key governance committees as well as operational functions such as internal audit on their roles and responsibilities with regard to ESG indicators, including measuring and assuring impacts. Atul has presented at conferences and roundtables on the value of ESG reporting and assurance.

Kirstie Ross, Sustainability Lead at TSB Commercial Bank
Kirstie leads the Sustainability Team at TSB Bank. Kirstie and her team are responsible for driving the strategy and action to allow TSB to meet its own operations and financed emissions net-zero targets, and for all climate reporting and disclosure. Prior to her current role, Kirstie was a senior in-house lawyer with over 20 years financial services experience.

Nimisha Sodha, Head of Responsible Investment at Just Group (insurance)
Nimisha has a diverse professional background with experience in responsible investment, ESG analysis, and teaching mathematics. Nimisha has held roles such as Head of Responsible Investment at Just Group plc, Ambassador at Diversity Project - Investment Industry, and Head of ESG at FE fundinfo. With a strong educational foundation in mathematics and additional certifications in actuarial science and business sustainability management, Nimisha brings a unique skill set to the field of investment and ESG research.

Polly Tsang, Senior Financial Services Regulatory Manager, Financial Services Faculty
Polly leads the ESG in Financial Services working party at the ICAEW, responding to pivotal consultations under the UK Green Finance Strategy, like the recent HMT consultation on ESG ratings providers and the FCA’s consultation on Sustainable Disclosure Requirements and Investment Labels.

Polly authors a number of articles for the Institute and its 60,000 members on sustainability. She is committed to exploring the risks and opportunities in regulating ESG in the UK, liaising with regulators such as the FCA, FRC and IOSCO.

Prior to this, Polly specialised in structured finance and asset backed securitisation at PwC, helping firms raise debt market funding and buy/sell asset pools. She qualified as a Chartered Accountant (ACA) with PwC London within banking and capital markets and investment management.