This report outlines 2026 financial crime and regulatory risks in the GCC, focusing on AI-enabled fraud, digital assets, cybercrime, beneficial ownership, supply chains, sanctions, and tougher AML/CFT oversight linked to upcoming FATF evaluations and recent legal reforms in the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Examines how financial institutions implement human rights due diligence, aligned with UNGPs and OECD guidelines, using case studies. Highlights challenges in data, prioritisation and leverage, and emphasises integrating human rights into governance, risk processes and client engagement to manage impacts across lending, investment and insurance activities.

APRA assesses Australia’s home insurance protection gap under climate scenarios, finding affordability pressures may increase uninsured households from one in seven to one in four by 2050. Rising weather risks and economic factors drive premiums, widening financial system risks, particularly in regional areas, with implications for households, insurers and banks.

This month’s sustainability roundup captures a shift from framework development to real-world application, where climate and nature risks are increasingly embedded across financial systems, legal accountability, and decision-making. It highlights how intensifying physical climate signals, evolving disclosures, and maturing litigation are converging with insights on sovereign risk, energy systems, and corporate strategy. Together, these developments show how sustainability is moving beyond principle—being tested, priced, and enforced across markets, regulation, and the real economy.

This report develops integrated climate-nature scenarios for financial risk assessment, showing that combined climate and nature policies provide a fuller view of agricultural, biodiversity and ecosystem-service risks than separate approaches, with implications for central banks, supervisors and future stress-testing frameworks.

Assesses major asset owners’ influence on climate policy, finding limited stewardship and advocacy despite significant potential. Most score poorly on climate lobbying oversight and transparency, with few aligning engagement to net zero goals. Highlights gaps in managing asset managers and industry associations, and calls for stronger, coordinated policy engagement.

Assesses Australian financial institutions’ views on climate and clean energy investment in South and Southeast Asia, highlighting growth potential, limited current exposure, key risks, and barriers. It emphasises blended finance, policy support, and government intervention to mobilise private capital and scale regional investment.

First Street argues climate risk is reshaping US housing via higher insurance costs and climate-driven migration, with projected net residential property value losses of about US$1.2 trillion by 2055 and 84% of census tracts facing some negative valuation effects.

Australia’s mandatory climate reporting regime began implementation from 2025, aligned with ISSB IFRS S2 standards. This guide explains regulatory expectations, governance responsibilities, emissions data requirements and practical steps organisations should take in 2026 to establish compliant climate disclosures, integrate climate risks into financial reporting, and prepare for assurance and regulatory scrutiny.

This working paper analyses how nature and biodiversity degradation affect sovereign borrowing costs. Using panel econometric models across 53 countries (2000–2020), it finds biodiversity loss raises bond yield spreads, with effects up to three times larger for higher-risk, often lower-income countries, indicating asymmetric sovereign risk from nature-related financial vulnerability.

This report provides guidance for financial institutions on financing a sustainable blue economy. It outlines principles, sector-specific criteria and case studies to support responsible investment in ocean-related sectors including seafood, ports, maritime transport, marine renewable energy and coastal tourism, aligning finance with ocean protection and long-term economic sustainability.

This month’s sustainability roundup traces a rapidly evolving landscape in climate governance and industrial transition, highlighting the convergence of ISSB-aligned disclosure standards and emerging carbon trade measures alongside shifting cost curves in transport and critical minerals. It underscores how tighter emissions accounting and border policies are embedding carbon competitiveness into capital allocation, while advances in electrification, AI-driven power demand and expanding legal accountability are integrating climate and nature risk into mainstream financial decision-making.

Analyses 162 cases (2015–2025) of 11 financial instruments financing climate adaptation. Finds blended finance most prevalent, with instruments mainly supporting ex-ante risk reduction. Adaptation finance is largely pooled and increasingly multicountry. Use varies by income level, highlighting growing innovation to mobilise capital for resilience.

The article interprets Copernicus’s Global Climate Highlights 2025 as a shift from episodic extremes to a structurally warmer, more volatile baseline. It argues that persistent temperature exceedances, ocean heat, cryosphere decline, and overlapping hazards demand a move from climate risk awareness to disciplined adaptation and continuity planning.

Guidance from UNEP FI and the Equator Principles on integrating project-related finance into nature-based risk assessments. It outlines frameworks, governance and disclosure expectations to help financial institutions identify, assess and manage biodiversity, water and pollution-related risks at project and portfolio levels.

This benchmark series provides an annual, independent assessment of progress in implementing Australia’s sustainable finance roadmap and action plan. It tracks policy, regulatory, market and institutional developments, offering a consistent framework to monitor how the financial system is aligning with sustainability objectives over time.