For more than a decade, Frédéric Samama has sought to turn climate finance from an academic concept into an investable reality.

Working at the intersection of finance, sustainability, innovation and public policy – and most recently in S&P Global's Chief Client Office, overseeing relationships with strategic clients – Samama has helped develop tools and frameworks that are now embedded in mainstream sustainable investing.

Among his most innovative contributions was while working as global head of institutional clients at Amundi, where he developed the first mainstream low-carbon equity indices in partnership with the Swedish pension fund AP4 in 2014. The innovation gave institutional investors a practical way to reduce portfolio carbon exposure without abandoning benchmark-based investing, thereby giving them a free option on a mispriced risk.

Variations of these methodologies have since been adopted across the asset management industry, including by investors such as FRR, CalPERS and Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund.

He later helped pioneer the first equity benchmarks aligned with recommendations from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), incorporating the cost of delay. The challenge, he says, was bridging two very different worlds. “Most people who read IPCC reports are not familiar with financial instruments, and most investment professionals are not trained in climate science.”

Success required translating scientific findings into investment tools that were practical, scalable and attractive to institutional investors, he tells Environmental Finance.

He sees this thread running through his career: “I’ve always tried to create bridges between people, products and ideas.”

Reflecting on his early years in sales on the trading floor at J.P. Morgan, Samama recalls questioning whether the career path he was on was in line with his values. He enrolled in an MPhil in Philosophy at the Sorbonne, studying independently alongside working long hours in finance. “I sacrificed all my vacations and weekends,” he recalls. “But it was a way to remain grounded and maintain a sense of discipline and humility.”

After J.P. Morgan, he joined Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, becoming a managing director at just 29 after inventing and implementing the first international employee share ownership programme, which quickly became a major success. In 2009, he founded one of the first research initiatives dedicated to investors and climate change, partnering with Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Patrick Bolton.

Since then, he has authored or co-authored more than 15 books and academic papers, testified before the US Senate on climate finance, and become a leading voice connecting financial markets with climate action.

Through books including The Green Swan and recently The Enigma of Climate Inaction, Samama has explored both the risks posed by climate change and the reasons societies struggle to respond. The book combines cognitive science, anthropology, economics, finance and philosophy and has received endorsements from Nobel Laureate Philippe Aghion, Maurice Obstfeld, Hélène Rey, Nicholas Stern and Gillian Tett, among others. Its ideas were also recently discussed at a Bank of England seminar attended by Hélène Rey.

He has also played a central role in mobilising investors around climate objectives. Under the umbrella of the United Nations, he co-founded the Portfolio Decarbonization Coalition, which secured roughly $600 billion of investor commitments ahead of the Paris climate negotiations, and served as the financial sector's flagship initiative at COP21's Action Day.

His experience has continued to reinforce the importance of applying pragmatism in sustainable finance: “Instead of having a provocative message or style, it's about being pragmatic and asking: how can we see things differently, for the benefit of everyone?”

Alongside his market work, Samama teaches sustainable finance at Columbia University and Sciences Po, continuing a career that bridges theory, policy and practice.

More recently, he has focused on understanding how societies function and how better decision-making frameworks might unlock progress on climate action and other global challenges.

Asked what he is most proud of, Samama points not only to innovations such as low-carbon indices and IPCC-aligned benchmarks, but also to the persistence required to bring such ideas to life and the privilege of having worked with exceptional people along the way.

Innovation, he argues, rarely emerges from isolated ideas; it requires experimentation, collaboration and calculated risk-taking.

“The most likely outcome is to fail,” he says. “You have to accept that.” And you have to create the conditions that allow for that, he adds.

Looking ahead, he believes sustainable finance faces two priorities: moving beyond reporting and developing better tools to understand and manage physical climate risks. Despite growing headwinds, he remains focused on action over rhetoric.

When you face a moral challenge, it’s not a question of being optimistic or pessimistic, he says: “It’s a question of action.”