Insurance can already price physical climate risk. The rest of finance cannot read it. That is the translation gap.
“Under a 2.5 °C pathway, extreme weather events will increase.”
“1-in-100 chance of a $5bn loss in 2030. $7.5bn in 2040.”
The Translation Gap: report back
The kick-off workshop, Climate Week NYC, 21 September 2026
Thirty people under the Chatham House rule, from banking, asset management, development finance, catastrophe modelling and reinsurance, analytics and index providers, philanthropy and the Global South. One question: what would have to change for physical climate risk to change an investment decision?
The room accepted the premise, then corrected it. Better analytics are necessary and they are not sufficient. Where nobody is required or paid to do the work, and no policy obliges anyone to act on the answer, a sharper curve changes nothing on its own. The readout records what was said, organised against the seven questions put to the room, and what the room did not contain.
The Rosetta Initiative is a platform, not a product.
Insurance, catastrophe modelling and actuarial science already price physical climate risk with real precision, period by period, at defined return periods. Mainstream finance cannot read that pricing. Physical risk is modelled as a distant scenario rather than a forward price curve, so it sits at a horizon where any reasonable discount rate washes it away, and capital arrives late, or not at all, in the places that need it most.
Serious work to close that gap is already under way: across insurers and reinsurers, catastrophe modelling and actuarial science, index, data and analytics providers, banks, asset managers and asset owners, supervisors and central banks, multilateral and development finance, and the communities carrying the risk. It is scattered, unmapped and short of critical mass.
The Rosetta Initiative exists to map that work, identify the gaps in it, and bring it together under an agreed common action framework, so that it becomes coherent, comparable and interoperable. We do not build analytical tools or data products, we do not duplicate what others are already doing well, and we are not a competing standard. We mobilise the market to close the translation gap.
Convenings are invite-only and held under the Chatham House rule.
Anthony Hobley
Founder, The Rosetta Initiative
Co-Lead, Insurance, Climate High-Level Champions
Thirty-five years across environmental law, carbon markets, climate finance and insurance. Founding CEO of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, Executive Fellow at the World Economic Forum, and most recently Deputy Chair, Climate Risk & Resilience at Howden Group. The translation gap thesis has been developed and pressure-tested over three years against sustained challenge from insurers, investors, regulators, economists and scientists.