News

Global Parametrics and its partners have been featured in “Fulfilling a Legacy of Societal Risk Management” published by The Climate Change High-Level Champions, Marsh McLennan, UN Race to Resilience, and Adrienne Arsht-Rockerfeller Foundation Resilience Centre. The report, published at COP27, highlights the advances in community-level climate risk reduction and adaptation through insurance sector innovations.

The report features ‘Pioneering Projects’ which reflect the spirit of urgency of climate change adaptation. Two of Global Parametrics’ innovative programs, B-READY and Climate Risk Insurance program, are showcased in this section. These programs demonstrate how parametric solutions, implemented through multi-sector partnerships, contribute to community-based anticipatory action and climate resiliency for those most vulnerable.

The B-READY program harnessed a forecast parametric index to trigger cash transfers to pre-identified vulnerable populations. Using these cash transfers, our partners Oxfam Novib, Oxfam Pilipinas, Plan International Philippines, Plan International provide preparedness training and resources in the days before a climate event in the Philippines, Sudan, and Indonesia. The B-READY program mitigates loss and damage and supports immediate post-event recovery.

The Climate Risk Insurance program, in partnership with the Mahila Housing Trust via capacity from our Natural Disaster Fund, combines a parametric index-based risk transfer solution with climate resilience training on adaptation measures. The program aims to protect female entrepreneurs in urban centres in India from the social, economic, and health risks that heatwaves and floods pose to their livelihoods.

To find out more, read the full report here: https://www.marshmclennan.com/content/dam/mmc-web/insights/publications/2022/november/Race%20to%20Reslience%20Report_COP27%20FINAL.pdf

Read Global Parametrics’ Impact and ESG Manager, Wendy Smith, sharing her reflections on the success and opportunity promised by one of our most impactful and exciting programmes – the CLIMBS Weather Protect Insurance product. 

In August, I visited the Philippines to meet with our in-country partner, CLIMBS Life and General Insurance Cooperative, to join them on two of their product roadshows in Davao City and Cebu City. It was a chance to share with CLIMBS’ customer cooperatives the value of our Weather Protect Insurance product and the ways it could benefit their farmer members and communities. Farmers in the Philippines have limited capacity to protect themselves against extreme weather events, due to precarious incomes from variable yields. Indeed, financial institutions can perceive the agricultural sector to be too risky, restricting farmers to access to credit. The CLIMBS Weather Protect Insurance programme provides is an effective alternative which protects the Philippines’ agricultural sector against the increased risk of climate change related events.

This year, the roadshows were a space to share evidence of the success of the Weather Protect Insurance product in its initial pilot. In 2021, the pilot, funded by our Technical Assistance Facility with capacity from the NDF partnership, provided protection against the increased risks posed by heavy rainfall events for 14 cooperatives across 15 provinces protecting 3,600 farmers. The product triggered three times in the year, following Typhoons Rai and Megi/Agaton, resulting in pay-outs for 8 of the 14 cooperatives, across six affected provinces.

However, the 2021 pilot did more than demonstrate the success of the product. Following learning events, in collaboration with farmers and cooperative members, consortium partners, including GP, CLIMBS and IBISA Network and CIAT, identified how the product could be improved to provide the best protection. The 2022 product incorporates those upgrades and offers cooperatives across CLIMBS’ network with a purposefully developed mechanism for disaster risk financing. Primarily, a wind-speed index was added alongside excessive rainfall, to reflect the reality of disruption faced by farmers during these extreme weather events. It also includes an upgrade of the online policy monitoring platform system, developed by IBISA, to include mobile compatibility for greater accessibility, as well as ensuring the agro-advisory learning modules developed and provided by CIAT address farmers most pressing concerns for climate change adaptation.

Once I had left the Philippines, the reality of the risk facing people across the Philippines became even clearer as Tropical Cyclone Noru made landfall on 24^th September. This tropical cyclone, documented as one of the fastest rapid intensifications ever recorded in the Pacific Basin, caused widespread devastation for communities and businesses. The Philippines is recognised as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in the world. Tropical cyclones are a key risk, with the country already experiencing up to 20 per year – a figure set to increase both in quantity and intensity due to the rapidly changing climate. This will present challenges for those whose livelihoods and assets are so closely tied to weather that is increasingly becoming more unpredictable and destructive.

The new, and improved, Weather Protect Insurance product has now been developed and scaled to cover 105 cooperatives, representing 100,000 farmers across 42 provinces. It is evidence of the demand and need for innovative disaster financing solutions in climate vulnerable countries, especially targeting those communities and sectors that represent low-income groups where the need to build resilience for sustainable development is paramount.

By Wendy Smith

Earlier this month, our Impact and ESG Manager, Wendy Smith, spoke at the 13^th ASEAN Insurance Congress, themed “Building Resilience for a Changing World”. The Congress was hosted in Kuala Lumpur by the ASEAN Insurance Council and The Malaysian Insurance Institute.

In her talk, Wendy explains how parametric insurance provides an active management solution to nat cat and extreme weather risk. Climate change and population growth has increased vulnerability to these hazardous events. This results in significant economic losses, especially in geographies which are traditionally underserved by formal risk transfer.

Wendy also discusses the exponential growth of the parametric industry since 2013. Global Parametrics is at the forefront of this progress, providing global parametric protection to enable business continuity in the aftermath of nat cat and extreme weather events.

Watch Wendy’s exciting talk at the ASEAN Insurance Congress below:

Last month I was in Singapore, a chance to reconnect with long-standing and new partners, who in many instances I’d never met in person due to restrictions over the last two years. This trip was an opportunity to understand more about clients’ needs and to promote Global Parametrics’ appetite to write risk in the region.

It had been 20 years since I was last in Singapore and arriving in the city I was astounded. Traditional old buildings stood alongside soaring modern skyscrapers, yet nothing looked out of place. It is a city that thrives on innovation and new thinking, whilst at the same time being unashamedly conservative – a metaphor for the risk transfer industry perhaps?

Singapore is known as the gateway to Asia. A region especially impacted by extreme weather and natural hazards. Tropical Cyclones, Earthquakes, Volcanos and Tsunamis are regular occurrences, whilst climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of drought, rainfall and flood. It can be all too easy to focus on these events in isolation and create distance from the reality of their devastation. Being in the places, with the people, that these events put at risk is always a stark reminder of the human, social and economic impact of our changing climate and natural hazards.

Across Asia, the climate emergency is a present reality creating increased risk. According to the Global Climate Risk Index, Japan and the Philippines are the most impacted countries by climate change today, making them a clear priority for disaster risk resilience and reduction. But just as diverse are the cultures within and across the countries that make up the region, so too are their vulnerabilities to extreme weather and natural hazards.

Home not only to some of the world’s highest peaks, remote small islands and low-lying plains, Asia is also home to some of the world’s most densely populated urban areas as well as vast rural communities, often dependent on land and local ecosystems for their livelihoods and way of life. While it has witnessed the rapid industrialisation and development of some of the world’s most important economies, the reality of chronic poverty and underdevelopment remains true for many. This creates diverse risk and socio-economic impacts of extreme weather and natural hazards, but for all, financial resilience is critical.

This is where parametric products have a key role to play.

Global Parametrics has always been keenly focused on how our products and solutions can be deployed to meet these challenges and demands in Asia. In the Philippines, we are an investor in their World Bank issued Catastrophe Bond, we support Climbs Insurance enabling them to offer their ‘Weather Protect’ product to agricultural co-ops, and we have been running the B-Ready, forecast tropical cyclone aid program with Oxfam Philippines since 2018. In India our work includes supporting AIC’s parametric crop insurance program for the state of Bengal and we have risk across the region in countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Typically, re/insurers, and therefore brokers and the entire risk supply chain have been focused on offering solutions for Natural Catastrophe risk, such as Earthquake and Tropical cyclone, or government crop programs. But there is so much more risk out there, and more and more clients are finding these are excluded from or prohibitively priced in their traditional indemnity coverages. Parametrics is a way to look at some of this risk differently, managed in a more pro-active way and therefore mitigated.

On the flight back I reflected on what I had learnt in Singapore through discussions with our partners. Climate change is here, it is being felt, and solutions need to be focused on local businesses, local challenges and local people. We need to do more, faster, to build financial resilience in these uncertain times.

By Toby Behrmann

To celebrate the 5-year renewal of our flagship programme with VisionFund, the African, Asian and Americas Resilience in Disaster Insurance Scheme (ARDIS), we sat down with Kevin Huttly, ARDIS Director, to discuss the scheme, reflect on its successes and outline future plans.

It’s the five-year renewal of the ARDIS, could you explain the scheme and what it does?

ARDIS covers VisionFund’s microfinance institutions (MFIs) across 27 countries. Established in 2018, ARDIS is a financial tool for promoting recovery lending and active risk management for our network of MFIs. It provides access to capital via climate indexed derivative and contingent credit contracts when a disaster occurs. VisionFund uses the ARDIS programme to support recovery lending to its client base, many of whom are women in the agricultural sector, where loans typically range from $70 to $300, in the event of a natural hazard or extreme weather, including earthquakes, tropical cyclones, droughts and excess rain. ARDIS buys the derivative contract from the Natural Disaster Fund, managed by the Global Parametrics team. Global Parametrics creates the parametric indices which back the risk transfer contract for ARDIS; if they are triggered during specific events there are payouts which are then distributed by ARDIS back into the institutions as capital.

How do you think that the ARDIS programme is innovative and unique at helping protect against the impact of natural hazards and extreme weather?

ARDIS has been referred to as the world’s largest non-governmental climate ‘insurance’ programme. However, the scheme is innovative and unique because it does not function like traditional indemnity insurance. Instead, ARDIS is a blended scheme that uses different financial tools to help people rebuild after a natural hazard or extreme weather event. This allows MFIs to continue lending to them, when often credit is scarce following the uncertainty of the event’s impact and thereby, helping them to get back on their feet faster. It would be very difficult to pre-emptively assess what a farmer’s exposure is to these risks, so instead, Global Parametrics creates indices for perils, which pay out when triggered by an event, eliminating assessment of loss time and costs  and permitting immediate access to payouts and benefits. These indices use global, publicly available datasets, allowing for an objective and transparent measurement of risk.

 How far reaching is the ARDIS programme?

Originally, when the scheme was first established in 2018, it covered 6 countries in Africa and Asia. This has grown over time with numerous successful renewals, now operating globally in all 27 of VisionFund’s countries as of 2022, 11 in Africa, 7  in Latin America, 6 in Asia and 3 in Middle Eastern and Eastern European countries.

Growth in geographic reach 2018-2022

What impact has the ARDIS programme had over the last five years?

The ARDIS scheme has made a significant impact in locations such as Honduras, the Philippines, Myanmar, Eastern and Southern Africa, where the scheme operates for a range of perils including flood, drought, earthquake, and tropical cyclone windstorm. We have seen evidence that most of the loans, in these places, have enabled people to get back on their feet, mitigating negative coping mechanisms, and being able to pay back their old and new loans in the wake of a natural hazard or extreme weather event.

In the last 3 years, the Covid-19 pandemic has been a significant challenge for VisionFund overshadowing ARDIS and its impact. At times many of our institutions have been restricted in their loan making abilities by lockdowns and have not been able to go into the field. This has meant restriction on recovery lending even when there has been both capital payouts and credit entitlements. However, more lately, institutions have been able to go back into the markets and start lending again, using recovery loans. Overall, I think Covid-19 has helped the understanding within our organisation of the value of recovery lending and of insuring against disaster. At an MFI level, our institutions now understand recovery lending a lot better, as they have been performing it for Covid-19.

In terms of pay-outs, ARDIS has made 5 payments under the derivatives for flood, drought and tropical cyclone windstorm.

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What is the future of the ARDIS programme, where else do you hope to make an impact with the scheme?

We are looking to build on the successes of ARDIS, to forge a new partnership with Global Parametrics going forward. We want to create ‘ARDIS 2.0’ which would act as a consultant advisor to other microfinance organisations, assessing their risk to natural perils and advising on the best programme structure and how to efficiently access products based on their risk. The partnership would not only focus on the insurance aspects, but also endeavour to educate people on recovery lending, how it works and its benefits, aiming to change mind-sets about how to best to protect vulnerable individuals and communities from natural hazard disasters.

For more information on ARDIS and its impact, please go to the VisionFund website: https://www.visionfund.org/our-focus/insurance/ardis

This week, our senior scientist Obbe Tuinenburg presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) 2022 Annual Conference, held this year in Vienna.

Obbe showcased our recent work developing a parametric solution for urban excess heat, and the role it can play in adaptation for climate vulnerable regions.

Obbe outlined a case study for our implementation of the urban excess heat product in Ahmedabad, Northern India, with the women’s network, the Mahila Housing Trust.

Watch the full presentation below: 

Global Parametrics’ mission is to catalyse markets for disaster risk protection and foster impact at scale.

Through our NDF Partnership, a blend of public and private capital, we combat extreme weather and natural hazard risk.

We are proud to document our journey to reach this impact, with the release of the first edition of the GP Quarterly Impact Briefer. 

In this edition, we explore updates from Q1 2022, including: 

• The release of the 2021 impact figures
• Announcing the B-Ready website, and our feature in the InsuResilience Global Partnership Annual Report
• Welcoming two new hires, Juan Pablo Sainz and Isabelle De Viggiani, to the GP team. 

See below for the full report

Impact Quarterly Briefer Q1 2022

Global Parametrics has been ranked no. 1 in Insurtech Insights’ and Sønr’s Future50 Europe- the industry’s definitive ranking of early-stage insurtech startups shaping the risk transfer landscape in Europe.

This award is the result of months of research, with input and critical analysis from some of the most experienced and influential names in the industry. Global Parametrics was selected amongst thousands of contenders for the top spot.

Produced by Insurtech Insights and Sønr Global, a leading market intelligence platform for the insurance sector, thousands of organisations were whittled down to a shortlist of over 300 before the final Future50 were selected by a panel of over 20 C-level judges. Judges hailed from some of the most highly regarded insurance companies worldwide.  

Insurtech Insights bases their rating system on The Sønr Index which evaluates millions of data points across the following criteria:

• People: The key people across the business, taking in factors such as where they have studied, their past involvement with startups or notable companies, their known network, and whether they are considered experts in their field.
• Product: Including the core tech stack of the business, patents they have registered, the customer problem they have overcome and any exceptional tech or experience they have created.
• Performance: Growth metrics such as downloads, partnership, investments and traction. And other attributes including financials, market sizing and performance traction to date.

We are honoured for this recognition, which validates both our work and our mandate in delivering solutions to mitigate risk to climate and extreme weather.

See us featured in the full Future50 here:

https://www.insurtechinsights.com/future50-europe/?utm_source=Future50s