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Ordnance Survey (OS) is helping financial institutions identify, measure, and manage climate risks across insurance and retail banking portfolios, to comply with the Bank of England’s new climate standards.

Issue

In December 2025, the Bank of England set clear expectations for how UK banks and insurers must identify, measure, and manage climate risks such as flooding, across insurance and retail banking portfolios.

Firms will need to show they understand their exposure to these risks and can manage them properly and meet the Bank of England’s requirements.

Spatial data can help form the basis of models which enable financial institutions to make decisions at a property level using comprehensive location data.

Approach

To provide robust, standardised data, Ordnance Survey combined their existing Land Use data (which maps land cover such as vegetation, bare ground, parks, and gardens), with their National Geographic Database’s (NGD)’s water data (providing details on rivers, streams, lakes, canals, and coastal waters)

This was further complemented with detailed location data, which includes building positions and structural features of a home such as height, footprint, number of floors, basement presence, and construction materials.

Together, this data helps assess to better understand a buildings exposure to climate impacts.

Impact

The data supports banks and insurers to assess the potential exposure of individual properties with confidence. This information feeds into flood risk models that use historical flood records to identify flood zones and measure risk levels across different areas, helping financial institutions spot parts of their portfolios where risk is concentrated and gain a clearer view of overall exposure.

By integrating location data into climate risk assessments, firms can strengthen climate resilience and gain a competitive advantage. Retail banks can use the data to identify areas of their mortgage portfolio facing rising flood risk, which can help better measure property values, while insurers can use it to pinpoint higher claim-risk areas and make more informed decisions about pricing and coverage.

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