TERMS OF REFERENCE (ToR)
Individual Consultant Engagement
1. About the Organization and Project
Overview of the Organization:
World Resources Institute India (Private Unlimited) (WRII) is is inter alia engaged in the business of providing services primarily in the nature of research and analysis and collating information with the object to improve and sustainably develop energy, water, transport, holistic planning and environment in cities and other geographic locations.
Project:
Climate damage is no longer a future risk — it is already showing up on national balance sheets. In 2025, the Asia-Pacific region recorded USD 76 billion in natural disaster losses, of which only USD 7 billion was insured — a protection gap of 91%.
Against that backdrop, India’s financial system has moved further on climate in the last three years than in the decade before.
- RBI joined NGFS in 2021. India’s central bank formally joined the global Network for Greening the Financial System and signed a public Statement of Commitment in November 2021 to support greening India’s financial system — its first significant entry into the global climate finance conversation.
- Draft Disclosure Framework on Climate-related Financial Risks (February 2024). Built around the four TCFD/IFRS S2 pillars — governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics — it applies to scheduled commercial banks, NBFCs, and large Urban Cooperative Banks.
- RB-CRIS launched in May 2025. The Reserve Bank’s Climate Risk Information System is intended to bridge data gaps for physical risk, transition risk, and emissions data. The richer data portal is restricted to regulated entities and is being rolled out in phases.
- SEBI’s BRSR and BRSR Core. Climate disclosure now extends into listed corporate territory through the top 1,000 listed companies, creating a richer data layer that FIs (Financial Institutions) can in principle use for credit decisions.
The intent has been established.
Recent evidence shows the gap is wide:
- Just one in six finance professionals have experience using ESG data to assess financial risks
- In Europe, 56% of banks had reached top-tier climate risk practice on at least part of their portfolios by end-2024 — up from just 3% in 2022 — after five years of structured supervisory engagement. This is what concerted action can deliver.
There is limited evidence on how Indian FIs are actually responding on the ground. The existing literature tells us what banks say in their disclosures — not how risk officers, credit teams, treasurers and CFOs actually think about climate risk, what they are doing about it, and what is challenging for them.
This project aims to close that loop through a diagnostic report. It uses primary engagement — close Chatham House rules roundtables and targeted one-on-ones — to surface real practice and real blockages on how the Indian Financial Sector assess their exposure to climate risk.
2. Objectives of the Consultancy
To understand how the Indian financial sector currently approach climate risk, by identifying and evaluating the following four diagnostic areas: 1) Awareness of climate impact on their own business and lending portfolios, 2) Their current approach to climate risk, 3) The challenges they face in the previous two areas, 4) Potential way forward to overcome the challenges
Deliverables:
- Design and conduct the roundtable with organisations in the finance sector including NBFCs, banks, and insurers across the four diagnostic areas
- Conduct one-on-one conversations with financial sector organisations, including NBFCs, banks, or insurers and companies across the four diagnostic areas
- Prepare a diagnostic report that includes research on the topic, and synthesizes and analyses the output and information gathered from the above roundtable, one-on-one conversations across the four diagnostic areas listed in the objectives above.
3. Scope of Work
- Conduct research to prepare for a roundtable
- Design the roundtable including the flow for the day, questions and topics of discussion, networking to secure participants, and conduct the roundtable with financial sector organisations including NBFCs, banks, and insurers across the four diagnostic areas
- Conduct one-on-one conversations with financial sector organisations, including NBFCs, banks, or insurers and companies across the four diagnostic areas
- Conduct analysis from the research to prepare for the roundtable, and the output of the roundtable and one-on-one conversations
- The list of organisations for one-on-one conversations and participants for the roundtable will be finalised based on discussions with WRII.
- Prepare a diagnostic report that synthesize the analysis above across the four diagnostic areas on how Indian financial institutions currently approach climate risk: 1) Awareness of climate impact on their own business and lending portfolios, 2) Their current approach to climate risk, 3) The challenges they face in the previous two areas, 4) Potential way forward to overcome the challenges
For detailed information, please check the complete version of the advert attached below.