Meteo Protect seeks rapid global weather risk expansion

Weather risk management, risk transfer, data, pricing, broking and structuring firm Meteo Protect, has launched a new corporate headquarters in Paris to facilitate broad expansion plans across the globe.

The broker offers a range of parametric and index-based weather insurance solutions that are underwritten by insurance and reinsurance firms, and likely attractive to ILS funds, from all over the globe.

It’s new office headquarters in Paris reportedly doubles its office space, and Meteo Protect says that the move was vital in order to accommodate its “rapid growth” across Europe and Latin America, and also enable its expansion to North America during the next two business quarters.

Weather risks in parametric and index structured form are attractive to providers of alternative reinsurance capital, such as ILS funds, as an area of investment outside of pure catastrophe risk. A number of leading ILS fund managers have specialisms in weather risks, often providing collateralised reinsurance solutions to support weather brokers.

As well as the expansion of its weather risk transfer capabilities the company noted the impending re-release of its Vivaldi for Insurers solution, a pricing and underwriting platform that enables carriers to offer weather risk transfer products to clients.

Alongside the opening of its new office the broker has said that the re-release further accelerates the company’s need for growth and resource requirements.

“The decision to expand our Headquarters was a logical step in our business growth strategy.

“Meteo Protect is currently expanding through Europe, the Americas and Asia, and as we are opening further branch offices to provide dedicated regional sales staff our research and development lab will remain in Paris, where it is centrally located to meet all regional needs. Importantly, with our pricing and underwriting platform for insurers ready for re-release, we have strong international distribution partnerships with leading risk takers, financial institutions and agricultural cooperatives,” said Gabriel Gross, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Meteo Protect.

The company’s parametric and index-based solutions are utilised across the world and the firm works with eight of the fifteen largest energy companies in the world. This includes nine countries throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and the firm is positioned well to expand into South America.

Axereal, the largest grain cooperative in France, utilises the Meteo Protect pricing and underwriting platform to provide its 16,000 members with insurance protection. As does Asajan in Spain, which utilises the Meteo Protect platform to provide insurance solutions to its 22,000 olive oil growers, explains Meteo Protect.