LONDON – 2nd November 2021 – Benchmark Labs Inc. (Benchmark Labs), a leading provider of asset-specific environmental forecasting solutions, and AkinovA Limited (AkinovA), an electronic marketplace for the transfer and trading of insurance risk, today, announce a partnership to better inform risk transfer decisions using in-situ forecasting technology to understand how micro-climates impact pricing mechanisms.

In this partnership, AkinovA and Benchmark Labs will work to reduce the risk that occurs as a result of discrepancies between the weather forecasted from the nearest weather station and actual weather at the asset location. These discrepancies cause unsuitable payments to be made and lead to user dissatisfaction. The partnership will also aim to reduce the knowledge gap between the insurer and the client when it comes to environmental information, thus reducing adverse selection.

Benchmark Labs’ unique ability to provide tailored environmental forecasts will enable the development of better parametric insurance models by delivering historical, asset-specific data and probabilities, along with real-time, in-field observations. The unique information will be used to determine payouts through AkinovA’s electronic marketplace when certain environmental conditions are met. 

“Benchmark Labs has developed a proprietary machine learning technology to provide specialized environmental forecasts leveraging state-of-the art numerical weather models and recent advances in machine learning, cloud computing and IoT technologies,” said Benchmark Labs Co-Founder and CEO Carlos Gaitan. “Partnering with AkinovA and their neutral, regulated and digital-first marketplace to transfer and trade re/insurance risks allows us to make our asset-specific information available to a variety of users, and to test and develop novel products that benefit the insurance and re/insurance sector.” 

Henri Winand, AkinovA’s Co-founder and CEO said “today’s series of climate threats require more precise technologies to increase capital allocation and boost climate resilience. Whether for indemnity or parametric insurance solutions, fast, accurate, cost effective, on-the-ground analytics and monitoring solutions are urgently needed. This enables brokers, MGAs, carriers, corporates and Insurance Linked Securities (ILS) investors in those climate resilience risk transfer products to price the risks they take on. The organisations seeking cover also benefit from more granular information: brokers, MGAs, risk carriers and other service providers on AkinovA are able to create new products to meet their clients’ needs, faster. With the addition of Benchmark Labs’ data and analytics offering, AkinovA’s clients and its ecosystem have access to an exciting new capability.” 

In the United States alone, extreme weather and climate disasters have totalled costs of more than $1.9 trillion USD since 1980. Last year registered the most costly disasters on record, at $102 billion in losses. 2021 is on track to be even worse. 

This partnership seeks to address such costly environmental risks by enabling the creation of new insurance products and better pricing mechanisms that reflect the reduction in uncertainty resulting from the accessibility of in-situ environmental measurements.

About AkinovA

AkinovA is a neutral electronic marketplace for the transfer and trading of re/insurance risk which is regulated in Bermuda. The marketplace offers an electronic environment where insurance, reinsurance and insurance linked securities (LS) risks can access new sources of capacity as well as increase the efficiency of transferring and trading re/insurance risks in the primary and secondary markets. AkinovA offers re/insurance and ILS service providers an additional channel to share their models, data and expertise with its market participants. AkinovA is working with the existing re/insurance value chain to grow the overall market and ease the creation of new products to meet today and tomorrow’s challenges in what is an increasingly more dynamic risk environment.

For more information, please go to: www.AkinovA.com, email Enquiries@AkinovA.com or phone +44 (0)20 8012 8172. 

About Benchmark Labs 

Benchmark Labs is a C corporation based in California, United States that specializes in providing asset-specific information and environmental forecasts to optimize management strategies, reduce water consumption, and improve operational margins. Benchmark Labs works with leading IoT hardware sensor manufacturers to provide environmental forecasts tailored to each individual sensor location, and is a leading provider of asset-specific forecasts for the agricultural, energy and insurance sectors. Benchmark Labs is supported by NextView Ventures, Techstars – The Nature Conservancy, and U.S. government grants from the National Science Foundation and NASA. 

For more information, please go to: www.benchamarklabs.com or email info@benchmarklabs.com.