New Zealand has introduced a law forcing financial institutions, including insurers, to disclose their climate-related risks.
Climate change minister and Green MP James Shaw said the disclosure regime would make New Zealand a “world leader”, and “the first country in the world to introduce mandatory climate-related reporting for the financial sector”
Banks, insurers, and publicly-listed financial companies will fall under the new regime.
The law has been designed to force companies to disclose more information about the climate effects of their operations. Ministers want insurers and other financial firms to take climate change issues into account as they make strategic decisions.
“Climate-related disclosures will bring climate risks and resilience into the heart of financial and business decision making,” Shaw said. “It will encourage entities to become more sustainable by factoring the short, medium, and long-term effects of climate change into their business decisions.”
“This bill will require around 200 of the largest financial market participants in New Zealand to disclose clear, comparable and consistent information about the risks, and opportunities, climate change presents to their business. In doing so, it will promote business certainty, raise expectations, accelerate progress and create a level playing field,” commerce and consumer affairs minister David Clark said after the bill passed its third reading on October 21.