Raincoat raises $4.5m for parametric climate disaster insurance build-out

Raincoat, an insurtech that develops scalable embedded climate insurance products with parametric triggers, has raised a $4.5 million seed round to help it build-out its mission to provide climate disaster insurance for a new era.

Raincoat is developing end-to-end automated insurance solutions that can enable financial institutions, governments, and insurers to provide immediate payouts in the wake of climate events and natural disasters to individuals small to medium sized businesses.

The $4.5 million funding round was led by leading insurtech and fintech focused venture investor Anthemis, while backing was also received from SoftBank Group’s SB Opportunity Fund, Puerto Rican banking leader Banco Popular, Chilean financial group Consorcio, Miami-based 305 Ventures, and first check investor Divergent Capital.

Raincoat is building a suite of scalable climate insurance solutions, all parametric trigger based, to enable individual claims to be instantly processed.

The company wants to take parametric insurance solutions a step further, to be automated and instant, while still providing meaningful coverage and a way for risk capital providers to source attractively structured climate and catastrophe risks.

“While fully-automated insurance holds the key to insuring the most vulnerable against ever-more frequent climate disasters, the obstacles to fully implement these programs at scale are incredibly complex. Our team hands off an end to end, fully operational, tailor-made solution that can be embedded in our partner’s existing channels, facilitating their claim response to end users,” explained Jonathan González, co-founder and CEO of Raincoat. “We gather all industry and local regulations, capacity, science, data and software development to deliver an automated parametric insurance product that covers all the stages of a policy lifecycle.”

“Time and again the world has watched vulnerable populations left with little recourse in the wake of climate disasters,” added Ruth Foxe Blader, partner at Anthemis. “We’re excited to support Raincoat’s cutting-edge solution to secure those at risk from disasters that will unfortunately become more and more common.”

“Raincoat’s solutions may very well hold the key to unlocking scalable parametric insurance concepts, ensuring the livelihoods of those most vulnerable to natural disasters and helping to bring urgent relief where it’s needed the most,” Chad Harris of the SB Opportunity Fund also said. “We are excited to back them as they continue to expand their offerings globally.”

Raincoat aims to partner with financial institutions and insurers to help them attach climate insurance coverage to their traditional products, or with governments that want to remove inefficiencies in the payout process for their citizens in the aftermath of climate disasters.

The company said its products aim to, “enable scalable end-to-end parametric climate disaster insurance programs, helping promote global climate adaptation and eliminating a persistent global coverage gap.”

Raincoat is already working with international reinsurers and governments worldwide, on initiatives to protect farmers and individuals from catastrophic weather conditions.

The insurtech also has active corporate projects in Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Mexico, and Colombia and with the new funding wants to expand its offerings worldwide.

Raincoat is a partner in a project we recently covered, that saw global reinsurance giant Munich Re backing a country-level flood parametric program for smallholder farmers across Colombia.