Big institutions own significant parts of the global economy through their investments. Finance for Systemic Change is exploring what happens when they act as stewards of that system, rather than simply trying to protect their own money. Based at the University of Cambridge, it uses an old established university as a laboratory to invent and test forms of finance that don’t really exist yet. One experiment brought together more than 80 universities and trusts to ask banks and fund managers for fossil-free ways of holding cash that the market did not yet provide. As an experimental research programme working inside an established institution, it requires external funding to operate. Emergence provides core support for this work.