Barclays adds Groundsure’s Climate Data to its Environmental Due Diligence

The bank partners with the leading environmental analytics business to screen commercial transactions for legacy and ongoing environmental and climate change risks.

Groundsure, the UK’s authority on environmental risk, has successfully renewed its dedicated service to support Barclays with its UK commercial lending business.

Originally launched in 2006, the Groundsure Siteguard solution was the first of its kind in the market and has been continually evolved to meet the bank’s specific needs and that of its valuer network to provide a definitive opinion on lending security.

Now, the renewed agreement sees the introduction of the new Siteguard Climate report, which includes a four-tier risk assessment summary with explicit opinions on environmental liability, loan security risks and potential property value impacts. It also provides an assessment on the physical climate risk from flooding both today and projected forward over the medium term.

Dan Montagnani, CEO of Groundsure commented: “We are not only delighted to be extending our already long and trusted relationship with Barclays to provide a solution for them to manage their current and forward exposure to environmental risks, especially in the context of greater compliance and due diligence requirements.

We are seeing the forward-thinking major banks coming forward and engaging with us on how to respond effectively to the Bank of England expectations on embedding approaches to climate related financial risk. By helping Barclays meet their compliance obligations for both environmental and broader climate impacts, they are well positioned to manage this at scale for their commercial portfolio.”

Ania Musial VP Environment & Climate Risk, Group Risk at Barclays said: “Ensuring we can walk into high value commercial lending with eyes fully open about legacy environment and forward physical climate risks is a vital part of our governance and credit risk approach.

Our long and successful relationship with Groundsure has ensured that many thousands of transactions have been effectively screened with their analytics and data intelligence. Now, we can take a longer view ahead to account for the potential impact that the climate will play on these lending decisions with greater confidence.”