OCC names Yue Chen climate risk officer

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has appointed Yue (Nina) Chen — formerly of the New York State Department of Financial Services — as its climate risk officer. 

The appointment, announced Monday, puts greater emphasis within the OCC on managing climate risk. Jonathan Fink, who was promoted to associate chief counsel earlier this year, had been leading the agency's climate efforts in addition to his other duties.

Chen will report directly to acting Comptroller Michael Hsu, who telegraphed the move in a speech last week. The appointment of a new climate risk officer would elevate "our internal function into a full-fledged office reporting directly to me," he said. 

In the same speech, Hsu suggested that regulators are starting to consider how testing banks for readiness for climate-related threats could look in the future. 

"With regards to scenario analyses for larger banks, a strong emphasis on diversity of approaches needs to be maintained, lest banks and regulators gravitate toward miniature standardized stress tests," Hsu said. "With climate-related risks, I believe we are much more exposed to failures of imagination — not asking enough 'what if?' questions — than we are to failures of stringency or consistency." 

At the New York banking department, Chen was the executive deputy superintendent for its climate division. There she "was responsible for integrating climate-related financial risks into supervision of regulated entities," according to the OCC. 

She was also the vice chair of the climate risk steering group at the International Association of Insurance Supervisors. Chen holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.