With over 50 years of experience in banking, Northern Inland Credit Union is a community-driven, family-orientated, member-owned mutual financial institution committed to supporting Australians achieve their financial goals. In response to growing regulatory pressures and assessment regarding climate risk, Northern Inland Credit Union engaged with Land Insight to unlock environmental risk insights and assist with responsible lending disclosure obligations.
The challenge
Northern Inland Credit Union’s main challenge is ensuring regulatory compliance with growing changes in this space. We sat down with Derek McIntyre from Northern Inland Credit Union, who shared it was essential for the team to understand the climate risks their portfolios were exposed to, its impacts and severity. In addition, to understand other potential target markets, to reinvest their services.
“The regulators are interested in whether we’ve got any assessments around climate risk and certainly trying to find the data is one of the things that’s been difficult for us.”
McIntyre went on to share “… the main one was the exposure that our book has to climate risks, where they were, and probably the extent of them… so, it wasn’t just fire risk, it was whether it was low or high.”
Objective
The primary objective of this collaboration between Northern Inland Credit Union and Land Insight were:
Enhance risk assessment: Utilise Land Insight’s database which contains exclusive proprietary datasets and historical property records to identify and quantify the potential impact of climate change for Northern Inland Credit Union portfolios.
Regulatory compliance: Complete portfolio health check to support compliance with industry mandates.
Support informed decision making: Uncover new opportunities and segments through a tailored report.
Outcome
Land Insight’s expertise and experience identifies that, portfolios with concentration in local regional areas are at significant risk if the region is subjected to a major fire or flood event. This information can help assess the potential impacts on human health, the environment, and financial risks, as well as identify effective mitigation strategies to minimise those impacts.
In Northern Inland Credit Union’s case, Land Insight was able to help understand current exposures to environmental perils, so they can make informed decisions and identify potential growth opportunities. Land Insight’s Portfolio Review offers this comprehensive environmental analysis of Northern Inland Credit Union's portfolios.
With their in-depth insights and environmental data, Land Insight were able to help Northern Inland Credit Union make an informed risk response.
“Especially for our marketing team, to understand some more specific target markets that could be available to us and some areas where we might need to reinvest in more services to attract more valued clients. I think that information that’s available there is certainly second to none.”
This collaboration demonstrates the value of integrating climate risk data into financial decision making. By leveraging Land Insight’s rich environmental data and expertise, Northern Inland Credit Union not only were able to obtain environmental insights and data - which unlocked new opportunities, but also for this data to be “simple” and not “too complex.”
“We had a really good understanding of all of the types of risks and had the granularity around the intensity of it.”
This case study reinstates the importance of proactive climate risk assessments and the positive impacts, leading environmental insights and risk specialists, Land Insight, can have on financial institutions.
For more information on how Land Insight can help Financial Institutions with environmental and climate risk visit our solutions page.
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