Steve Waygood has stepped down as Chief Sustainable Finance Officer at Aviva Investors to found an independent think tank focused on mobilising capital to accelerate the global shift to a sustainable economy.
Waygood is leaving the UK-based asset manager to become the founding CEO of the Finance Transition Centre (FTC) after a 25-year career on the buy side.
He said the FTC would build on the work of Aviva Investors’ Sustainable Finance Centre for Excellence, which Waygood established to explore and enable the transformation of global capital markets to better support long term sustainable development.
Waygood was appointed chief responsible investment officer for Aviva Investors in November 2006. He is also a Trustee of the UK arm of the World Wide Fund for Nature, and Co-founder of World Benchmarking Alliance and Corporate Human Rights Benchmark.
He was also a member of the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on sustainable finance and the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure.
Waygood said he would continue to collaborate with governments, the private sector and global institutions in order to help shape the financial system’s “response to the sustainability imperative”.
According to a LinkedIn post, initial priorities for the FTC would include helping policymakers and shapers understand the finance system better. Waygood also indicated that he had plans to contribute to the UK Group of 20 Summit in 2027, and to continuing to work with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on global transition governance.
“Transitioning the finance system onto a more sustainable footing is now more urgent than ever,” he added.
