Managing Climate Risk in the U.S. Financial System

Book excerpt: This publication serves as a roadmap for exploring and managing climate risk in the U.S. financial system. It is the first major climate publication by a U.S. financial regulator. The central message is that U.S. financial regulators must recognize that climate change poses serious emerging risks to the U.S. financial system, and they should move urgently and decisively to measure, understand, and address these risks. Achieving this goal calls for strengthening regulators’ capabilities, expertise, and data and tools to better monitor, analyze, and quantify climate risks. It calls for working closely with the private sector to ensure that financial institutions and market participants do the same. And it calls for policy and regulatory choices that are flexible, open-ended, and adaptable to new information about climate change and its risks, based on close and iterative dialogue with the private sector. At the same time, the financial community should not simply be reactive—it should provide solutions. Regulators should recognize that the financial system can itself be a catalyst for investments that accelerate economic resilience and the transition to a net-zero emissions economy. Financial innovations, in the form of new financial products, services, and technologies, can help the U.S. economy better manage climate risk and help channel more capital into technologies essential for the transition. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5247742