Andreas Hoepner

"Economists should study financial markets as they actually operate, not as they assume them to operate - observing the way in which information is actually processed, observing the serial correlations, bonanzas, and sudden stops, not assuming these away as noise around the edges of efficient and rational markets." Lord Adair Turner (2012: p64) 'Economics after The Crisis: objectives and means' MIT Press: Cambridge.



Motivation Statement (as of January 2025): Andreas' research interests are interdisciplinary and primarily driven by his enthusiasm for making a societal impact, in particular on the Sustainable Development Goals 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 13, 16 and 17. His most notable research impact to date were the following three regulations published in the Official Journal of the European Union on December 3rd 2020, which are based on two publications Andreas' co-authored as independent member of the European Commission's Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance.

1. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/1818 of 17 July 2020 supplementing Regulation (EU) 2016/1011 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards minimum standards for EU Climate Transition Benchmarks and EU Paris-aligned Benchmarks. Official Journal of the European Union, L406, Volume 63 December 3rd 2020 Pages: 17-25 [Based on Hoepner et al. (2019a) 'TEG Final Report on Climate Benchmarks and Benchmarks’ ESG Disclosure' and Hoepner et al. (2019b 'Handbook of Climate Transition Benchmarks, Paris-Aligned Benchmark and Benchmarks’ ESG Disclosure']
2. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/1817 of 17 July 2020 supplementing Regulation (EU) 2016/1011 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the minimum content of the explanation on how environmental, social and governance factors are reflected in the benchmark methodology. Official Journal of the European Union, L406, Volume 63 December 3rd 2020 Pages: 12-16. [Based on Hoepner et al. (2019a) 'TEG Final Report on Climate Benchmarks and Benchmarks’ ESG Disclosure']
3. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/1816 of 17 July 2020 supplementing Regulation (EU) 2016/1011 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the explanation in the benchmark statement of how environmental, social and governance factors are reflected in each benchmark provided and published. Official Journal of the European Union, L406, Volume 63 December 3rd 2020 Pages: 1-11. [Based on Hoepner et al. (2019a) 'TEG Final Report on Climate Benchmarks and Benchmarks’ ESG Disclosure'] 

Biography (as of January 2025):

Professor Andreas G. F. Hoepner, Ph.D., is a Financial Data Scientist working towards the vision of a Conflict-Free Capitalism. While the vision is unlikely to be fully achievable, Andreas’ view is that anyone can strive to make a regular contribution to reducing abusive conflicts of interests and thereby enhancing the fairness of our society’s financial system. Formally, Andreas is Full Professor of Operational Risk, Banking & Finance at the Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School & the Lochlann Quinn School of Business of University College Dublin (UCD), serves on the schools’ management team as Vice Principal (VP) for Research, Innovation & Impact (2021-), leads the GreenWatch research group (2020-) and is the Principal Investigator for the EU Horizon €5m Nature-3B research consortium (2025-27). In terms of policy influence, Prof. Hoepner is serving as Head of the Data Science Hub of the European Union’s 2nd Platform on Sustainable Finance (PSF2). Prior to PSF2, Andreas served on the EU’s 1st Platform on Sustainable Finance (PSF1, 2021-2023) and the EU’s Technical Expert Group (TEG) on Sustainable Finance (2018-2020). He is the only member to have been appointed to all three phases in personal capacity (i.e. based on personal expertise rather than representing a relevant legal entity/stakeholder group). In his EU roles, he co-invented ‘EU Climate Transition (CTBs) and EU Paris-Aligned Investing (PABs)’ in 2019 by aligning investment strategies across asset classes with the IPCC’s 1.5°C trajectory (with no or limited overshoot) using a 7% annual decarbonization trajectory (EU Regulation 2020/1818). CTBs and PABs are backed by assets exceeding €150bn as of June 2024. Beyond PABs, Andreas co-invented EVIC (2019), Precautionary Principle based CO2e estimations (2021) and EU Investing for Transition Benchmarks (2024).  

Before joining UCD in June 2017, Andreas was Associate Professor of Finance at the ICMA Centre of Henley Business School (2013-17), where he remains a Visiting Professor of Finance. He is also Visiting Professor in Financial Data Science at the University of Hamburg and icurrently serves as advisor to inter alia BJSS, ExecuShe, LGPS Central, RepRisk, SDGLabs.ai and VLK. Andreas received his PhD from St. Andrews in June 2010, where he was on faculty (2009-13). He co-founded and co-chair(ed) two socially motivated enterprises: ReFine Research which praised transparent pension funds (2013-21) and Sociovestix Labs (SVL), a spin-off from the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence [DFKI]). Prof. Hoepner also advised the United Nations (2021) and EU’s DG INTPA (2022-23) on Green Taxonomies in the EU, South Africa and Mongolia, led on data science for a UK National Cyber Security Centre funded education project (2018-20), served as lead academic advisor (2009-16) for the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and consulted for organisations such as EBRD, EIB, EIF, EU JRC, GIZ, NZ Super or the World Bank.

Andreas is the sole inventor of a US patent titled ‘Investment Performance Measurement’ (No. US8751357 B1). His research won several best (empirical) paper awards inter alia from 2024 the American Accounting Association Ethics Symposium (with Harjoto & Schneider), the 2024 Global Climate Finance Conference (with Cojoianu, Paliampelou, Vu & Wojcik), the 2023 British Academy of Management’s Financial Management track (with Gao) and the 2019 PRI conference (with Oikonomou, Sautner, Starks & Zhou). Andreas’ transdisciplinary work has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union, Nature Climate Change and Science as well as Financial Times 50 journals including Journal of Business Ethics, Research Policy and Review of Finance. He enjoys publishing interdisciplinary in outlets such as Accounting, Auditing & Accountability; Annals of Rheumatic Diseases, Business Ethics Quarterly, Ecological Economics; International Review of Financial Analysis; Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open, Journal of Business Finance & Accounting; Journal of Business Research; Journal of Economic Geography; Regional Studies, Review of Quantitative Finance & Accounting or Therapeutic Advances in Neurological Disorders. His publicly available research ranks him Top 500 globally by downloads in the last 12 months on SSRN (Top 1,000 all time). He co-organises conferences with policy makers such as Promoting Sustainable Finance at the European Commission or the EU Science Hub Summer Schools on Sustainable Finance (1st/ 2nd/ 3rd/ 4th/ 5th/ 6th) and co-edited special issues on topics such as GHG reporting quality or the EU’s Green Taxonomy. More generally, Prof. Hoepner’s research earned him, aged 33, an invitation to serve as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015 for "exceptional contributions to the study of finance, particularly ... responsible investment”. Aged 37, he was the to date youngest recipient of the Irish Sustainable Finance Person of the Year Award. Andreas is most proud, however, about his record as Ph.D. and post-doc supervisor with more than ten students having successfully graduated into (current) roles at Fidelity, ICMA Centre, MSCI, UCD or the Universities of Belfast, Cardiff, Hamburg, Oxford, Sussex and Yale.

Beyond these academic honours, Prof. Hoepner’s research and views have been covered in international media including ARD (Monitor), BBC (incl. World Business Report, Business Live, Radio 4 today programme, Radio 5 Live), Bloomberg, CNN, DW, EU Observer, FT, Forbes, Fortune, Guardian, IPE, New York Times, P&I, Politico, Reuters, RTE, Washington Post and Australian, Austrian, Canadian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Indian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Singaporean, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Swiss & UAE media. He also presented his research to key academic audiences (e.g. AFA, EFA), large asset owners (e.g. AP 1/2/3/4/6/7, APG, BPP, BV, BVK, CalPERS, CDC, CoE/F/S, DBU, Elo, GPIF, IFC, Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, LGPS Central, Lothian, MP, NBIM, NIB, NYS DFS, NZS, OTPP, PD, PGGM, PKA, Publica, Railpen, SFM, Unisuper, USS, VBL, World Bank), and regulatory bodies (e.g. Bundesbank, BDF, CBI, CSRC, EBA, ECB, EEA, EIOPA, ESMA, European Commission, FCA, IOSCO, UBA, USSIF). An extensive record of Prof. Hoepner’s publications, roles, and outreach activities can be found on his CV, which also discloses the ISINs of his personal investments to practise full transparency around any potential conflicts of interest. In professional roles, Prof. Hoepner believes that traceable signals empower wonderful decisions. Hence, he commits to efficiently executing exclusively effective engagements. When interpreting academic behaviour, Andreas follows the credo: evidence is discovered, theories are promoted.