DE-RISKING RUPEE CARBON: WHY THE MARKET NEEDS UNDERWRITERS, NOT JUST A REGISTRY

India's carbon market has built the infrastructure to issue and trade credits, but not to insure them so banks won't accept carbon credits as loan collateral, treating them as a curiosity rather than a bankable asset. This gap isn't regulatory caution; it's the absence of underwriting for reversal and invalidation risk, the two ways a credit can fail. Global insurers (Oka, Kita, Howden) already price this risk for lenders elsewhere, but none are licensed to operate in India yet. Meanwhile, India's own regulatory groundwork IRDAI's 2025 sandbox and "use and file" route is ready-made for this kind of product but has only been aimed at blue carbon projects, not the market. The article argues that policymakers should build reversal-and-invalidation insurance across all credit types, not just coastal ones, since insurance not more registries are what would let banks finally treat carbon credit as real security.