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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent

‘Imagine Westminster under water’: stricter tests needed to see how City copes with climate disasters

Person shelters under an umbrella in heavy rain with St Paul's Cathedral in the background
Torrential rain falls on London’s Millennium Bridge. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA

The climate crisis has pushed the Bank of England to consider stringent new tests for lenders to see how they would cope in an “extreme” catastrophe that plunges “Westminster under water” and sparks a rapid change in government policies.

Sam Woods, the boss of the UK’s financial stability watchdog, suggested that the City needed to be put through a more rigorous scenario, having so far only proven that banks and insurers could survive “slow burn” changes over a span of 30 years.

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