Hometrack has partnered with Twinn by Haskoning to deliver comprehensive physical climate risk data to Leeds Building Society, powering pioneering climate risk management and responsible lending. The collaboration has created a solution that integrates risk data covering flood, subsidence, coastal erosion, and more – directly into mortgage origination and portfolio-level analysis, enabling the building society to proactively manage climate-related risks. This marks one of the earliest practical examples of a building society moving beyond compliance with climate regulatory requirements, using data insights to support brokers, protect customers, and shape long-term lending strategy.
Leeds Building Society, which provides residential mortgages through brokers and directly to members, sought a solution to accurately quantify climate risk after finding that open-source data was too high-level for their needs. The building society’s vision was to incorporate reliable climate risk data into its live decision-making processes for new mortgage applications and for back-book analysis and stress testing. This is where the partnership with Hometrack, a provider of valuation and risk products for the residential property market, and Twinn by Haskoning, a leader in physical climate risk analytics, came into play.
“Our strategy has always been to be a fast adopter in this space,” said Graeme McRitchie, Head of Prudential and Enterprise Risk at Leeds Building Society. “We wanted to act quickly in response to regulation, but with a robust approach rooted in reliable data. The reliability element was key; we didn’t want to blindly attribute climate risk scores to tick a compliance box. We wanted data we could interrogate, understand and use to make robust decisions.”
This has been achieved through a seamless, one-stop solution that uses Hometrack’s mortgage automation and property valuation system as a foundational base to incorporate climate risk into Leeds’ automated decisioning process.
According to Neil Lewis, Head of Credit Decisioning at Leeds Building Society, the data is “ready to use at the point we need it – we don’t have to amend, update or cleanse it. It’s a seamless process that enables real-time decision making”.
Graeme Gillespie, Director of Commercial Strategy at Hometrack, highlighted the significance of the partnership. “This has been a really successful collaboration with Leeds Building Society and Twinn. The Bank of England recently issued Consultation Paper 10/25 in which they call for much greater connectivity between climate risk policy and operational execution. Leeds already has a platform to achieve this that really is best in class”.
Rob Carling, Twinn Channel Sales Manager at Haskoning, added: “Using the solution, Leeds can see aggregated and property-level risk ratings for various Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and emissions scenarios. This means it can quantify climate risk across its portfolio – and understand how that risk may change over time”.
This innovative approach not only supports regulatory compliance under CP10/25 but also helps the building society guide brokers and, by extension, consumers. By assessing climate risks at the individual property level, Leeds Building Society can help customers make more informed decisions and avoid creating “climate prisoners”. Leeds Building Society’s new ability to quantify climate risk at origination has helped them translate risk into opportunity.
