Lloyd’s is moving ahead with a couple of new parametric projects for business interruption from pandemics and cyber disruptions.
Lloyd’s Lab has selected U.S. insurtech Thimble, which provides on-demand insurance for small businesses, to join its accelerator program, where it will develop low-limit parametric contingent business interruption coverage to protect businesses from COVID-19 and future pandemic losses. Thimble says the product will position insurance as a “first line of defense” that pays small businesses immediately if certain criteria are met.
Lloyd’s is also launching what it calls a first-of-its-kind business interruption policy to protect small and midsize enterprises from IT disruptions or downtime. The new policy from Parametrix Insurance automatically pays out if a customer suffers an outage in critical IT services, such as cloud, e-commerce or payment systems. Lloyd’s says the new product, led by Tokio Marine Kiln, is the first off-the-shelf parametric IT downtime policy. It’s particularly important today given that so many businesses have shifted their critical IT operations to third-party service providers, Parametrix says.
Separately, Farmers Edge is collaborating with Munich Re to deliver large-scale data-driven parametric weather insurance. The deal combines highly precise, site-specific data sets with analytics and artificial intelligence to develop scalable solutions. Agricultural parametric insurance covers areas that are excluded from all-risks indemnity policies, such as excess moisture or heat. The policies are designed to pay out as soon as the parameters are triggered.
