Meteo Protect signs up more French wine makers to parametric insurance

Lloyd’s of London coverholder and parametric and weather index insurance specialist Meteo Protect has signed up more French wine makers to its product this year, after farmers had been hit with freezing cold temperatures and frost during 2017’s critical spring growing period.

The impact of 2017’s cold weather has created more awareness among the French wine making community that insurance linked to weather extremes can benefit them by protection their operations finances when severe winters strike.

Now in the second year of offering, Meteo Protect has renewed its parametric spring frost insurance risk cover for wine makers, experiencing a 15 fold increase uptake by viticulturists and the same increase in the number of brokers in France now offering the parametric protection.

2017’s severe cold hurt almost every vineyard in France, with the prime wine growing region of Bordeaux particularly hit, seeing a drop in output of 40%, while France’s overall output was 17% down on average years.

“We have seen an increased demand from France’s wine growers for weather insurance following last year’s spring frost in the region,” explained Gabriel Gross, CEO of Meteo Protect. “France experienced significant crop damage resulting from frost last spring, for which all insured growers who suffered losses were compensated. In fact, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of growers subscribing for parametric weather insurance and brokers who now offer our solutions to their clients. We are now looking to increase the number of cooperatives who offer parametric insurance to their members. In addition, parametric insurance protects the cooperative from input shortfall or volume or price fluctuations.”

Meteo Protect’s parametric insurance solution is available to brokers in France through a dedicated platform, enabling fully customised parametric weather insurance to be tailored to help wine growers (and other sectors) increase their resiliency against climate-related risks.

Cold and frost are just one area of climate that can be protected against, with other products from Meteo Protect able to cover other weather extremes on a parametric basis.

Importantly, being parametric in nature, these products can help farmers and wine growers to bounce back after weather losses, by providing rapid payouts without the need for lengthy claims assessment processes.

As these parametric insurance programs grow, reinsurance capacity will be required to protect against major losses, and to keep the risk capital as efficient as possible.

As our sister site Reinsurance News explained recently, it’s not just cold and frost that hurt French wine makers, recently the Bordeaux region wine growers were hit hard by a hail storm event as well.

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