Crédit Agricole next bank: Mapping physical risks and adaptation strategies in the built environment

Context and background

As climate change intensifies physical risks, financial institutions must assess their exposure and adapt. This project supports CA next bank in aligning its Swiss residential real estate portfolio with the EU Taxonomy and FINMA requirements by identifying key hazards and mapping them using geospatial tools and defining their impact on asset value. The overall project contributes to sustainable finance efforts, strengthens climate resilience, and supports ongoing ESG and risk management strategies.

Project description

The project aims to assess physical climate risks across CA next bank’s Swiss residential mortgage portfolio in line with the EU Taxonomy requirements. Using geospatial tools and publicly available risk maps, the student will identify and evaluate exposure to relevant hazards such as floods, heatwaves, and wildfires, while excluding non-relevant risks (e.g. sea level rise). Sensitivity thresholds will be defined to determine asset alignment, and the analysis will consider different climate scenarios and time horizons.
The project will also explore a quantitative climate risk metric (e.g. Climate Value at Risk or impact on probability of default / loss given default), as well as actionable adaptation measures for the bank to implement.

This project is part of the Transformative Projects: teams of 3-4 SMT students from different disciplines work together over three months on a topic developed by a company with the objective to propose new perspectives and solutions that can have the potential to transform industry or societal practices.