Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero report on 22 case studies finds private finance can fund adaptation but scaling needs policy data and project pipelines

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero has published a report, Investing in Resilience: Lessons from Private Finance for Unlocking Investment in Adaptation, setting out how financial institutions are already financing climate adaptation and resilience solutions across advanced and emerging economies. Drawing on 22 case studies, the report shows banks, insurers, asset managers and asset owners helping clients fund resilience measures across sectors, with nearly half of the solutions delivered by private financial institutions alone using conventional instruments such as loans, bonds, equity and insurance. The cases show adaptation finance extending beyond traditional infrastructure into areas including climate-smart agriculture, water infrastructure, energy grid hardening, resilient real estate and parametric insurance for households and sovereigns. Banks are structuring transactions, insurers are providing risk transfer, analytics and capital, and asset managers are supplying long-term capital and aggregation. The report says viable transactions often depend on translating physical climate risk into financial metrics, combining multiple value streams such as avoided losses, lower insurance costs, stronger business continuity and new revenues, and working closely with clients to turn vulnerabilities into bankable projects. It adds that wider scaling will require supportive government policy, more public-good physical risk data, stronger demand from companies and a deeper pipeline of investable projects, with governments playing a catalytic role through concessional capital and technical capacity.