Globally climate finance is increasingly becoming a case of too little, too late. Longstanding disagreements over what qualifies as climate finance have been accompanied by a persistent shortfall in capital to address climate risks. India’s experience has been no different.Beyond the money lies a deeper challenge: how a banking-dominated financial system, shaped by mandates developed over decades, can adapt to a risk it was never designed to assess. This challenge is acute for regulators. Its resolution is essential if climate finance in India is to move at the pace required by the country’s climate commitments.The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) operates under a broad mandate that includes maintaining monetary and financial stability while supporting economic development. Central to this role is ensuring that banks, as custodians of depositors’ funds, remain solvent, prudently managed and resilient to systemic shocks. At the same time, climate change is increasingly recognised as an economy-wide risk with potentially significant implications for financial stability.New capabilitiesIntegrating climate considerations into prudential regulation is therefore not a simple policy choice. It is an institutional transition that must be carefully embedded within existing regulatory frameworks.One reason this transition is difficult is the gap between climate science and financial regulation. Banking supervision has evolved through decades of experience in assessing credit, market and operational risks. Climate science, by contrast, deals with hazard projections, emission pathways and probabilistic assessments of physical risk.Standardised dataTranslating a heatwave projection, flood scenario or transition pathway into measures such as credit impairment or probability of default requires bridging disciplines that have historically had little overlap. This calls for new institutional capabilities within banks, within the regulator and across a wider ecosystem of data providers, analysts and model developers.