Why physical risk demands attention
Severe weather events and other physical risks are intensifying, with measurable effects on financial performance. MSCI’s physical risk solutions are designed to help financial institutions see physical risk where it matters, quantify exposure, and assess potential financial impact across investments and loan books.
We support a location- and company-specific approach to physical risk analysis. Our multilayered insights can help you understand exposures and support more informed decisions in risk management, reporting and capital allocation.
Identifying the type and severity of climate hazards (e.g., hurricane, flood, heat).
Assessing the susceptibility of assets based on infrastructure, asset type, and sector.
Evaluating the effectiveness of existing strategies to withstand physical risks.
Mapping the geographic footprint of physical assets and investments.
Estimating potential damages or disruptions.
Implementing or supporting measures to adapt to physical risks.
Reinforce resilience across multiple levels
Our models are designed to help you identify vulnerabilities across your portfolio or loan book, benchmark exposure across industries and regions, and zoom into specific assets down to postal codes and building footprints with precision.
View portfolio exposures
Gain a clear, aggregated view of exposure to physical climate risk across your portfolio and loan book. Benchmark across sectors and regions to identify potential areas of concentration risk.
Spot company vulnerabilities
Assess company-level exposure to physical climate hazards. MSCI’s models support materiality assessments by identifying vulnerabilities across assets and operations.
Mitigate asset-level risk
Drill down to individual asset locations using detailed geospatial data from millions of mapped sites. Analyze postal codes, building footprints and facility coordinates for more precise impact analysis.
Areas of physical climate risk to facilities of listed companies
Illustrative image showing 6 out of 28 hazards.
Floods, extreme heat and other physical hazards are not distant risks but present-day events. They’re also accelerating, unfolding across economies, markets and communities, disrupting operations, cascading through supply chains, eroding revenues and lowering asset values. For financial institutions, understanding physical risk is critical to reinforcing the resilience of portfolios and loan books, shaping decisions and sharpening strategies.
Featured productsDiscover how our solutions can help strengthen your physical risk assessment.
GeoSpatial Asset Intelligence
Identify physical risk with AI-powered asset intelligence. Assess location-specific exposure to 28 physical hazards and nature risks for more than 700,000 listed and unlisted companies at 2 million+ locations or submit your own real estate locations for a full portfolio picture across asset classes.1
Physical Risk Metrics - Issuer Level
Gain a company-specific view of climate-related physical risk by mapping location-level exposures to 28 distinct physical hazards, from flooding and extreme heat to seismic zones, across 800,000+ asset locations for 12,000+ companies.2
Regional Physical Hazard Metrics
Assess physical hazards across time horizons, scenarios and asset types for 173,000+ locations worldwide to pinpoint the vulnerability of asset exposures, sharpen credit risk management, and strengthen underwriting and investments.3
Know your exposure.Ask about our physical risk solutions.
Discover MSCI research
Anticipating Hurricane Risk Before It Strikes
What if investors could see hurricane risk before it strikes? Asset-level insights reveal vulnerabilities, enabling smarter engagement, hedging and adaptation to safeguard portfolio performance.
Physical Risk: The New Frontier
Financial crises come and go. Physical risks — climate, geopolitics, demographics — are unprecedented and alter the world for decades. It’s time investors confront these realities reshaping our world.
The Role of Elevation in Flood Models
How inaccuracies in elevation data can misrepresent flood risk and distort potential financial impacts across asset locations.
Real Estate Data and Analytics
Identify performance drivers, assess risk and evaluate opportunities with data from 170+ countries for insight into transactions properties and players in the global real-estate universe.4
1 As of September 2025.
2 As of September 2025
3 As of January 28, 2025.
4 As of June 2024.