Spanish olive growers get parametric weather cover with Meteo Protect

Weather index insurance specialist Meteo Protect has secured a deal that will open up its parametric risk transfer products to the Spanish olive growing community, to help farmers and producers enhance their resilience to weather and climate-related risks.

Weather risk management, risk transfer, pricing, data, broking and structuring firm, Meteo Protect’s weather insurance platform has been adopted by the olive growers cooperative in Spain, the Agricultural Association of Young Farmers (ASAJA JAEN), in order to provide their 22,000 affiliates with access to customisable weather insurance using parametric and index triggers.

“We are very pleased to partner with ASAJA JAEN to provide Spain’s olive growers with customized weather insurance to better protect their livelihoods,” commented Gabriel Gross, CEO of Meteo Protect.

“The impact of this year’s weather on the olive harvest is illustrative of the immense need to provide risk coverage to olive growers. This year’s drought in Spain led to significant early loss of fruit and the drought is forecasted to worsen. Thanks to our partnership with Asaja Jaen, the olive growers will be protected from losses due such weather risk,” Gross continued.

Olive trees are highly susceptible to weather variations and extremes, with temperature considered the most important environmental factor, as olives require a cooling period for flower bud induction, while water stress can impact photosynthesis, plant growth, oil production, and yield.

Through a fully branded web-based underwriting and pricing platform can create customised weather insurance and risk transfer solutions, including the ability to select their policy specifications, such as geo-location, crop, coverage period, and weather parameters.

The platform then allows users to aggregate weather-related data, analyse risks, create triggers, and prices and underwrite policies, all in real time.

The parametric index-based weather insurance can be fully customised to fit the individual needs of growers, with the end-product designed to compensate them from losses suffered due to adverse weather conditions that breach the trigger point that has been set for the parametric index.

Meteo Protect operates as both broker and underwriter for many of its parametric weather policies, enabling the firm to add efficiency to its operations by sourcing and underwriting weather risks, while utilising reinsurance capacity to back its portfolio.

Meteo Protect’s weather insurance platform offers an intriguing insight into how providers of alternative, or third-party reinsurance capital could interface with risks more directly by working with technology led underwriters and originators of risks.

Insurance-linked securities (ILS) funds and capital markets investors are increasingly attracted to business outside of the highly competitive, and pressured pure catastrophe risk space, with weather risks an area that some ILS funds already specialise in via collateralised reinsurance solutions designed to support weather risk brokers.

Join Artemis in Singapore on July 13th 2017 for ILS Asia, tickets on sale here