Demex raises $9m Series A led by Anthemis, Blue Bear Capital & QBE

The Demex Group, a climate risk focused insurtech that aims to deliver climate-resilience through financial risk solutions on a global scale, has successfully raised $9 million in Series A funding as it looks to help businesses mitigate the risks of climate change.

The Demex Group launched in 2020 and raised $4.2 million of seed funding from leading financial services, fintech and insurtech focused venture investment groups, Anthemis and IA Capital.

The company has had a relationship with specialist insurance-linked securities (ILS) investment manager Nephila Capital, which supplied specific weather risk capacity to underpin products Demex created, while global reinsurance firm Munich Re has also been a risk capacity provider and provides operational support.

Demex has been building out its climate and weather analytics driven products over the last year, as well as its service that democratises access to climate data that is useful for risk transfer, insurance or reinsurance transactions.

Now, with a Series A round under its belt, Demex is aiming to expand its platform offering and enhance its services that help companies and industries to analyse, price, and transfer climate-linked risks at scale.

The $9 million in Series A funding was led by financial services and technology investors Anthemis Group, Blue Bear Capital, and QBE Ventures. IA Capital Group also participated.

“Property owners, tenants and managers are typically overlooked by the incumbent weather risk marketplace that focuses on agriculture and energy,” Ed Byrns, CEO and Founder of The Demex Group commented on the raise. “Recent advances in cloud computing, big data, and blockchain have enabled us to deliver a simple, secure, and scalable platform that’s specifically designed for climate resiliency. We are thrilled to both retain our investors from the seed round and excited to be joined by Blue Bear Capital and QBE Ventures on our journey creating global climate resilience.”

Anthemis’ Ruth Foxe Blader added, “The Demex Group is successfully designing products for clients seeking standalone protection for climate-linked financial exposures. Insurance carrier partners embed climate resiliency solutions into existing products, such as homeowners or business lines. API integration localizes real-time pricing at the property address- level within customer networks. For clients with nuanced financial exposures to weather, Demex’s team of climate scientists analyze historical costs and revenues compared to extreme weather events and produce custom-fit expense models. We are thrilled to support this unique approach.”

“We see an ecosystem teeming with new tools for ‘climate intelligence’ to help businesses understand the risk of volatile weather for their assets, operations and budgets. The question then becomes how to address that risk,” explained Blue Bear Capital’s Hank Hattemer, who also takes a seat on the Demex Board of Directors. “Demex has built a masterful answer to this question – the definitive platform for pricing and transferring complex weather risks that are ubiquitous yet behave in highly localized ways. The Demex team has the industry experience and product development expertise to scale its platform as managing climate and weather risk becomes standard protocol for CFOs and risk managers in virtually every industry.”

The climate analytics and modelling space is developing apace, but Demex has approached this from a point of view of delivering climate-linked insights to support financial decision-making, including risk transfer, with a goal to increase climate resilience.

That’s what makes their products interesting and worthy of attention in the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, where innovative capital managers and underwriters may find innovative ways to work with companies like Demex and put their analytics and insights to work in structuring climate-related risk transfer deals.

Last month we covered the news that Demex had partnered with Canopius owned MGA and insurance API platform Vave to offer parametric extreme temperature insurance to commercial property owners.