From Risk to Opportunity: How Capital Can Enable Climate Resilience

Climate and nature-related risk is accelerating faster than markets can price it, and insurers are often the first to feel it. The same dynamic appears elsewhere: investors hesitate to finance conservation and adaptation projects, while financial inclusion in emerging economies stalls. These share the same underlying reason, that the risk has outpaced the tools we have to price and fund it. Swissnex, in collaboration with the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York, Swiss Business Hub USA, Greater Zurich Area, Global Infrastructure Basel, and FAST-Infra, convenes senior professionals from banking, insurance, asset management, development finance, policy, research, and community organizations for a single morning that follows this market failure end to end. Together we will explore where it originates, to how capital rebuilds what has been lost, what actually gets built afterward, and what else still stands in the way. Switzerland is well positioned to convene this conversation. It sits at the center of global re/insurance, while its banks and insurers are increasingly operating within a regulatory framework that integrates climate and nature-related risk governance, alongside a democratically mandated net-zero target for 2050. This puts Switzerland in a position where voluntary commitments are increasingly being tested against financial and regulatory realities. Bringing together representatives from government, finance, insurance, and development institutions, this program explores how climate and nature-related risks can be better measured, priced, and financed. More information, speakers, and event program This event is part of Assembly, the main Swiss stage at Climate Week NYC 2026. As world leaders gather in Midtown Manhattan, Swissnex assembles Swiss and global voices – from private sector innovators and researchers to artists and policymakers – in the East Village for three days of communal climate thinking and action. Assembly speaks to deliberation and democracy – the idea that communities must collectively define their futures – as well as the ongoing, creative, improvisational process of constructing those futures from the pieces of our present.