A host of regulators have said that lenders must do more in their approach to climate change or risk facing “greater losses than anticipated”.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Prudential Regulation Authority, the Pensions Regulator, and the Financial Reporting Council issued a joint statement today regarding the publication of various climate change adaptation reports.

In these, they reiterated statistics published recently that describe 10% of mortgage exposures in England being in flood risk zones, which can affect house prices.

For evidence of this, the regulators point to a 20% drop in flooded areas of New York City after hurricane Sandy hit in late 2012, with these valuations still being 10% lower than neighbouring areas today.

The FCA says that lenders are taking climate related risk into account “as they feed through into credit risk and a risk to the collateral held against loans,” but that it does not see evidence of “significant, widespread changes in lenders’ behaviour in response to climate change outside their usual risk calculations.

“Banks need to be taking a strategic and organisation-wide approach to climate change, including both their mortgage and financing activities,” the watchdog says.

“We are developing a strategy for how the FCA will push industry, using all our regulatory tools, to ensure we can meet the climate change challenge,” says FCA chief executive Nikhil Rathi.