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Verizon launched the Climate Resilience Prize in 2021 to support companies using advanced technology to create solutions that address climate-related impacts to vulnerable communities. Now, in its second year, the four winning companies, selected by Verizon, have demonstrated proven results with their new approaches and are ready to scale. One of the 2023 winners is a Puerto Rican-based company, Raincoat, which provides data analytics that undergird “parametric insurance” to protect individuals from the financial disruption of natural disasters.
Raincoat leaders launched their company after experiencing the challenging aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017. The experience gave them deep insights into the multi-layered issues confronting public and private sectors in protecting and responding to natural disasters, including the resources, experts and financial support needed to help individuals recover. In response, Raincoat supports parametric insurance strategies with its team of engineers, scientists, user experience designers, and insurance experts.
Harnessing the power of real-time data, Raincoat’s sophisticated models interpret complex environmental data to help develop robust and reliable insurance solutions to those who could be impacted by a severe weather event. By collaborating with insurers, financial institutions, nonprofits, and governments, Raincoat supports insurance strategies designed to overcome the long waiting periods they might have experienced after a severe climate event.
Image courtesy of Raincoat
Unlike traditional insurance, which involves a lengthy claims adjustment process, parametric insurance automatically pays an insured party a fixed amount based on the size of the event (e.g., a hurricane of a certain magnitude). Raincoat’s models and algorithms use public data to help calibrate payouts based on the size of catastrophic events. For example, for the recent hurricane Otis in Mexico, claims were paid within 24 hours of landfall. In addition to covering property losses, Raincoat’s solutions cover non-property related financial losses, such as loss of income.
Image courtesy of Raincoat
With the money received from the Verizon Climate Resilience Prize, Raincoat is looking to deploy its solution in heavily affected hurricane and flooding areas, such as New Orleans, Florida, and New York.
In addition to being named as a 2023 winner of the Verizon Climate Resilience Prize, Raincoat was recently named to Fast Company’s list of “World Changing Ideas 2023.”
About The Climate Resilience Prize:
The Climate Resilience Prize, which launched in 2021, is part of Citizen Verizon, the company’s responsible business plan for economic, environmental, and social advancement. To learn more about Verizon’s ongoing efforts to support communities in need, please visit CitizenVerizon.com.
This article is sponsored by Verizon.
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