Insurance company CIOs watching COP26 are probably feeling contrasting emotions. On the one hand, none of them will be wishing for it to fail in pulling the world back from the brink of potential catastrophe but they will not want too many new rules tying their hands – at least not too many, too fast.

New guidance to help regulated firms manage climate-related financial risk has been published by the Bank of England's Climate Financial Risk Forum (CFRF) in advance of next week's COP26 conference opening in Glasgow. This is aimed at all financial services firms, including insurers and asset managers.

The steady growth of the green bond market has accelerated during 2021 and is set for a further boost as the European Commission (EC) takes another step towards establishing standards for green bonds.

The long-awaited overhaul of the Solvency II regime moved a step closer this week when the European Commission published proposals it claims could release as much as €90bn of capital currently held by insurers.

The chief executive of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), Sam Woods, has used his response to the recent Treasury Select Committee report on the future regulatory framework for UK financial services to reiterate its belief that the UK must not become a “rule-taker” following Brexit.

There are many reasons why the credit cycle will never look the same again as the Covid-19 pandemic has added new layers of central bank intervention on top of the legacy interventions from the global financial crisis.