S&P and Verisk Unite to Quantify Climate's True Financial Cost

JERSEY CITY, N.J. – February 17, 2026 – In a landmark move to address the escalating financial threats of climate change, S&P Global Energy and data analytics firm Verisk have announced a strategic collaboration to create a new benchmark for climate risk intelligence. The partnership aims to fuse the worlds of financial modeling and insurance analytics, providing institutions with a unified, quantifiable view of both insured and uninsured losses from catastrophic climate events.

This initiative comes as industries from banking to real estate grapple with record-setting losses from natural hazards and intense pressure from regulators to accurately report their climate-related financial exposures. By integrating their respective data platforms, the two companies intend to fill what many experts describe as a critical gap in the market: the ability to translate climate science into auditable, financial terms that account for the full scope of potential damage.

Bridging a Critical Data Divide

For years, financial institutions and insurers have operated in data silos. While insurers have sophisticated models for predicting losses from hurricanes and floods, banks and asset managers have struggled to integrate such physical risk data into their financial projections. Traditional risk models, which rely heavily on historical data, are proving increasingly inadequate in an era of unprecedented and non-linear climate change.

The collaboration directly confronts this challenge. Verisk, a leading partner to the global insurance industry, will integrate its physically-based climate catastrophe risk data into S&P Global Sustainable1's Climanomics platform. This will allow users, for the first time, to see a comprehensive picture that distinguishes between losses likely to be covered by insurance and those that will remain as direct financial liabilities on a company's or an investor's balance sheet. Understanding this uninsured portion, often termed the 'protection gap', is crucial for assessing the true resilience of an asset or portfolio.

This gap has been a major blind spot, particularly for financial institutions holding long-term assets like mortgages or commercial real estate. Without a clear view of uninsured risk, their exposure to climate-driven events has been significantly underestimated. The new joint solution aims to make this invisible risk visible and, most importantly, quantifiable.

Responding to a Wave of Regulation

The timing of the announcement is no coincidence. Financial regulators and central banks across the globe are escalating their demands for transparent and robust climate risk disclosure. Frameworks like the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) have shifted from voluntary guidelines to mandatory requirements in many jurisdictions. In the United States, proposed SEC rules echo these demands, while in Europe, the European Central Bank (ECB) has conducted climate stress tests that revealed significant data deficiencies within the banking sector.

These regulatory bodies are no longer satisfied with qualitative statements about climate risk. They are demanding hard numbers and scenario analyses that demonstrate a firm's resilience to various climate futures. This collaboration is positioned as a direct response to that demand, offering what the companies call a “strong, auditable foundation” for climate disclosure.

By providing decision-grade data that aligns with these emerging regulatory standards, the platform enables institutions to move beyond simple compliance and stress testing. It equips them with the insights needed to satisfy investor demands for transparency and proactively manage capital efficiency and solvency challenges in a rapidly changing risk landscape.

A Look Under the Hood: The 2050 Vision

The technical integration behind the partnership creates a powerful, two-way flow of information. In addition to Verisk's data enriching the Climanomics platform, S&P Global Sustainable1's climate-adjusted inland flood data will be incorporated with Verisk's event simulations. This will generate a groundbreaking set of future-projected climate events modeled for the first time through the year 2050.

This forward-looking dataset will be delivered through Touchstone®, Verisk's flagship catastrophe risk modeling platform. For insurers, this means they can translate the projected impact of climate change on flood intensity directly into potential insurable losses, allowing them to estimate future changes to their portfolio risk with far greater precision. It allows an underwriter to ask not just what flood risk looks like today, but what it could look like in 2040 or 2050 under different emissions scenarios.

This long-term modeling capability is a significant leap forward, transforming climate risk from an abstract future threat into a concrete variable that can be integrated into today's strategic planning and financial analysis across multiple sectors.

From Reactive Compliance to Proactive Strategy

Leaders from both companies emphasize that the goal is to empower businesses to shift from a defensive, compliance-focused posture to a proactive, strategic approach to climate resilience.

“Financial institutions are under pressure to quantify climate risk with accuracy and transparency,” said Rob Newbold, President of Verisk Catastrophe and Risk Solutions. “By combining Verisk's state-of-the-art catastrophe models with S&P Global Energy's climate risk analytics, we're empowering the market with a credible, and auditable foundation for strategic decisions addressing climate and physical risks.”

The practical applications are extensive. Banks can use the intelligence to refine lending strategies for mortgages in coastal areas. Asset managers can screen their global real estate holdings to identify and mitigate climate-driven risks, protecting long-term value. Real estate investors can gain a comprehensive understanding of both insured and uninsured risks to identify resilient growth opportunities.

“Together, we're helping clients increasingly move from reactive climate-related compliance to proactive resilience—setting a new standard for how the industry approaches risk in a changing world,” said Thomas Yagel, Head of Sustainable1 at S&P Global Energy Horizons.

By providing a common analytical language for insurers, banks, investors, and corporations, the collaboration promises to foster a more holistic and effective approach to managing the systemic financial risks posed by a warming planet, ultimately helping to build resilience not just for individual firms but for the broader economy.