Introduction

The playbook is built on the premise that “insurability”—the availability of adequate insurance at an affordable price—is increasingly determined by the resilience of the places where assets are located rather than just individual asset-level measures. Natural catastrophe losses have exceeded $100 billion annually since 2020, with global insured losses estimated to reach $148 billion in 2026. This trend poses significant macroeconomic and political risks, affecting property values and financial stability. In California, homeowners’ insurance premiums have risen by 84% since 2020, partly driven by wildfire risk. In Australia, 1.3 million properties are projected to be uninsurable by 2100, while 10% of Canadian homes are already considered uninsurable due to extreme weather.

The challenges stakeholders face

Risk management currently faces a collective action challenge where no single actor can act effectively alone. Stakeholders across the property value chain—including insurers, lenders, local governments, and asset owners—face interconnected challenges. These include fragmented hazard data, a lack of standardised risk metrics, and the difficulty of coordinating transboundary action. A survey revealed that 31% of businesses view governments and regulators as the key parties needing to act, followed by investors at 24%. No single actor has sufficient incentive to act alone because resilience often creates value through avoided losses and wider social benefits rather than direct revenue streams.

Interventions to build place-based resilience

To address systemic underinvestment in place-based resilience, the report identifies four priority interventions designed to be tested, scaled, and owned by multi-stakeholder coalitions.

Intervention 1: Mapping what matters – risk-decision data for resilient places

Current catastrophe models often fail to capture community-scale interventions or nature-based solutions effectively. Research in Paradise, California, demonstrated that adding green buffers reduced modelled losses by 27%; when combined with modern building codes, the compounded reduction reached 42%, cutting total modelled losses from over $10 billion to approximately $6 billion. The report recommends creating shared data platforms, such as the proposed national flood-risk platform in Ireland, and improving business interruption modelling. For instance, data centres must assess external dependencies like grid power and transport access. This vulnerability was illustrated by the 2025 Palisades fire in California, where businesses suffered a 70% revenue decline over five months due to road closures, despite escaping physical damage.

Intervention 2: Paying for resilience – financing structures that make investment viable

Financing must address the free-rider problem, as the benefits of resilience are distributed among multiple parties while costs are concentrated and immediate. Studies indicate that each $1 invested in adaptation yields between $2 and $10 in benefits, with some investments returning more than $10 over a 10-year period. Innovative mechanisms include resilience improvement districts in California and Connecticut, which use tax increment financing and benefit assessments to pool funds. In Egypt, Commercial International Bank is embedding physical climate risk into corporate lending through blended finance. Other models include city-scale risk pooling in Latin America and community-based catastrophe insurance in New York City, which provides emergency grants of up to $15,000 to households within days of a flood event.

Intervention 3: Making resilience count – recognition that insurers, lenders and investors trust

Translating resilience work into market value requires recognised metrics and a common language. Blue Carbon Resilience Credits are being developed in the Caribbean to recognise the flood-reduction benefits of coastal wetlands, which are estimated to avoid over $140 million a year in property damage. The US Community Rating System (CRS) provides a successful blueprint for place-level recognition, offering premium discounts of up to 45% to residents in over 1,500 communities that implement coordinated floodplain management and warning systems.

Intervention 4: Realising co-benefits – aligning incentives across the risk ecosystem

Resilience projects generate co-benefits that extend far beyond traditional return on investment, such as biodiversity gain and carbon sequestration. In Singapore, a “sponge city” strategy has reduced flood-prone land from 3,200 hectares in the 1970s to less than 25 hectares today, a 99% reduction, while simultaneously enhancing water security. The Severn Valley Water Management Scheme in the UK aims for up to £1 billion in investment, generating a projected £5 billion in wider economic impact. To scale these efforts, coalitions must develop governance frameworks for transboundary risks and translate shared co-benefits into tangible revenue streams.

Stakeholder engagement in different action areas

Successful resilience requires specific actions from various actors to reduce fragmentation. Insurers are encouraged to use risk-score products to signal where risk is rising and test resilience standards to inform pricing. Local governments must convene stakeholders and provide clear resilience guidelines, while asset owners should require resilience considerations in acquisitions and leases. Data providers must fill hyperlocal data gaps and develop interoperable formats to ensure metrics are used consistently. Regulators play a critical role by mandating standardised metrics and supporting data infrastructure to drive consistent adoption across the financial and property sectors.

Where to now? Three immediate next steps

The report concludes with a call to action for stakeholders to assess their readiness through the identified interventions, join existing pilots, and build new coalitions where gaps remain. By coordinating efforts across the risk ecosystem, leaders can relieve insurability pressures and strengthen place-based resilience. The work demands better data to sharpen investment cases and financing structures that crowd in both public and private capital. These actions are ready to be tested and scaled to manage physical risk in the face of increasing extreme weather events.