The Financial Conduct Authority says 15.5% of regulated mortgage contracts in England are linked to postcodes with some level of flood risk. Its analysis, published on 26 October 2026, maps mortgage-postcode locations against Environment Agency data for rivers and the sea, and for surface water.
That figure is an indicator of lending exposure across areas. It is not a count of homes that have flooded, nor does it mean that every home in a flagged postcode faces the same risk. The FCA assigns a postcode to a flood band when the postcode’s approximate centre falls within the mapped area. A property may be on higher ground or otherwise have a different risk from that centre, and large postcodes can include very different locations.
The FCA’s regional tables show why one national figure cannot describe local conditions. For surface-water flooding, the regulator reports that 24% of postcode centres in Inner London West and 21% in Inner London East fell into a risk category above “no risk”; Essex recorded 18%, including 6.5% in the high category. For flooding from rivers and the sea, the “affected” share was 38% in East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire and 28% in Lincolnshire. These are postcode-level classifications, not estimates of the share of homes damaged or people affected.
The analysis also compares mortgage contracts with loan-to-value bands and measures of deprivation. The FCA reports no clear, consistent pattern linking higher loan-to-value lending with greater flood exposure. It says exposure varies by flood type and community, and the data can help identify where climate-related issues may matter to financial firms and consumers.
The FCA describes the work as an overview of regulated mortgage lending in England. It does not assess individual borrowers, lenders or properties, and it does not introduce new rules or supervisory expectations. Its method has limits: mapping postcode centres can misclassify locations near risk boundaries and can obscure variation inside a postcode.
For buyers, owners and landlords, the practical distinction is important: aggregate mortgage statistics can show where risks may warrant attention, but they cannot answer whether a particular building is at risk. That requires property-specific checks and, where needed, specialist assessment. The FCA’s findings are a starting point for understanding the market, not a substitute for a flood report on an individual home.