Career conversations: Accelerating capital flows towards climate finance

I found the course curriculum very fascinating. Although I had exposure to economics, finance earlier, the curriculum was designed in such a way it will definitely help any person who wants to broaden his or her knowledge about finance.  

My name is Labanya Prakash Jena. My finance career started in 2005. I spent around 11-12 years in the private financial services sector between 2005 and 2016.  In between that, I also completed my CFA® Program from CFA Institute.  

My career zoomed after 2015 when I got my CFA® Charterholder because I could add CFA® (designation) to my name and my resume got a lot of traction. After that, I learned a lot about climate change, sustainability from other courses as well. And some of the courses are also offered by CFA Institute.

Currently, I'm working as the Head of Center for Sustainable Finance in Climate Policy Initiative. Climate Policy Initiative is a advisory and consulting company which looks climate change from the lens of finance.

So, when you are talking about climate change or climate actions in particular, you need a massive amount of capital to meet your climate goals. If you see the amount of capital required by India, it will be in the range of USD10 to USD12 trillion in the next 30-40 years to meet India's ambition to achieve its climate target.

But the amount of capital is not really accelerating as expected to achieve that target. In my job, we need to understand the characteristics of these financers, including banks, financial institutions, pension fund, and insurance company, which will help us, after understanding their characteristics, what are the policies, regulations, or market practices required so that they can accelerate capital flows for climate actions.  

Since I studied about all these institutions in my CFA® courses, I understand what is the perspective of the lenders, what is the perspective of the fund managers, as well as research analysts. By understanding those perspectives, it is helping me to design right policies, right regulations, and right market practices for them.  

I came to know about CFA (Program) from my colleagues in the financial sector, as well as the people who are working in North America and European Union because my job function was to support the portfolio managers based in European Union and United States, and they encouraged me to pursue the CFA Program.

I found CFA Program covers broad courses on finance, starting from economics to financial statement analysis, corporate finance, portfolio management, alternative investment. My suggestion to CFA (Program) aspirants, you need to plan much before the examination. Do a lot of practice. It is gruesome, but at the same time, it is also rewarding.