Dr Yue (Nina) Chen has been appointed Chief Climate Risk Officer by the US Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC). She will lead the agency’s work on climate risk in the areas of supervision, policy and external engagement, and reports direct to Acting Comptroller Michael Hsu.

Chen was previously the first Executive Deputy Superintendent of the Climate Division at the New York State Department of Financial Services, and has also worked for the Nature Conservancy, Goldman Sachs and Royal Bank of Canada. She holds degrees in chemical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing and MIT.

Her major challenge will be to help develop a system that accurately assesses climate-driven risks to banks. Issues such as global warming and extreme weather conditions are making it harder for banks to price loans when lending to businesses, especially in real estate. A major catastrophe caused by extreme weather could threaten the stability of the entire financial system, and Democratic lawmakers have long been pushing for concerns about this to be more fully integrated into regulation.

She will be the key point of contact for the Federal reserve, whose new Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr recently told the Brookings Institution that the Fed would work with the OCC to give guidance to banks on “how we expect them to identify, measure, monitor and manage the financial risks of climate change”.