Climate Insider Brief:
- Demex Group raised $10.25 million in a Series A round, led by Congruent Ventures, with participation from Moxxie Ventures, MetaProp, and Blue Bear Capital, supporting its risk analytics and parametric reinsurance solutions.
- Demex provides a parametric stop-loss reinsurance solution for secondary perils like severe convective storms (e.g., tornadoes, hail), which are increasing due to climate change, offering tailored protection for insurers to manage financial risks.
- The Demex model, which helps insurers mitigate risks from frequent weather events, has gained strong investor support and a positive market reception, with $65M of reinsurance sold in its first season.
PRESS RELEASE – Sep 05, 2024 – The Demex Group, a risk analytics and intelligence company that facilitates innovative stop-loss reinsurance protection, has raised $10.25 million through a Series A and previously closed SAFE funding round, led by Congruent Ventures and included Moxxie Ventures, MetaProp, and existing investor Blue Bear Capital.
Demex delivers an innovative parametric reinsurance solution for losses due to severe convective storms – which includes tornadoes, thunderstorms, hail and wind – which have become far more frequent due to climate change, enabling insurers to protect their financial security. In partnership with reinsurance brokers and reinsurance companies, Demex arranges coverage for losses above a specified threshold. This model is resonating with customers as well as investors with $65M of reinsurance bound in the first selling season.
“Growing losses from these storms are a critical problem for the insurance industry – challenging insurance companies’ annual earnings and balance sheet surpluses. We’re grateful to have investors who bring climate perspective, technology capabilities, a property mindset, and insurance experience to Demex,” said Bill Clark, President and CEO of Demex.
“Insurance carriers are taking significant losses from high frequency events such as thunderstorms and have been digging into their surpluses for years,” said Abe Yokell, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Congruent Ventures who led the round. “Reinsurers, too, have experienced higher than expected losses due to secondary perils. The Demex model – developed by a blue-chip team from industry heavyweights – quantifies risk and reduces deviation, which broadens reinsurance offerings and ultimately provides a stronger insurance industry for property owners.”
“Higher frequency extreme weather events, like severe convective storms, now cause more damage than the catastrophic events that are addressed by traditional reinsurance,” said Hank Hattemer, Chief Operating Officer of Blue Bear Capital. “Each Demex insurer customer gets a reinsurance product that is precisely calibrated to how those weather events affect its business, tuned based on its own data. No other reinsurance product that I’m aware of works like this – it is a fundamentally new product and the market response has been overwhelmingly positive.”
The investors participating in the funding round come from a range of different sectors. Congruent Ventures is one of the largest early stage investors in climate solutions, Blue Bear Capital invests in high-growth technology companies across the energy, infrastructure, and climate industries, Moxxie Ventures is a Silicon Valley based seed-stage firm that invests across sectors and MetaProp is a property technology investor specializing in real estate and the built environment.
About Demex
Demex is an independent data and analytics company that partners with reinsurance brokers, insurers, and reinsurers to solve the rising challenge of frequent property losses from secondary perils. Demex models loss accumulation based on weather and claims data, informed by climate research, and provides parametric stop-loss solutions that meet the needs of insurers and reinsurers. Demex is a market-maker for a class of risk that is surpassing catastrophe losses – a cluster of losses from secondary perils that threatens not only insurers’ annual earnings but also the sustainability of their businesses.
About Congruent Ventures
Congruent Ventures is a leading early stage venture firm focused on partnering with entrepreneurs to build companies addressing climate and sustainability challenges across four themes: Mobility and Urbanization, the Energy Transition, Food and Agriculture, and Sustainable Production and Consumption. The firm has over $1B AUM across early stage climate tech funds. With 59 companies in the portfolio, Congruent is amongst the most active investors in the climate tech ecosystem. Read more in Congruent’s 2023 Impact Report.
About Blue Bear Capital
Blue Bear is a venture capital and early growth equity firm driving digital technologies and machine intelligence into multibillion-dollar verticals across the energy, infrastructure, and climate industries. The team comes from leading energy private equity firms, startups, and large industrial technology developers. Blue Bear typically leads Seed through Series B rounds, with a portfolio covering operational AI, IoT, and cybersecurity technologies, all deployed with enterprise customers to drive connectivity and intelligence across the world’s most critical industries. More information can be found at www.bluebearcap.com.
About MetaProp
MetaProp is a New York-based venture capital firm focused on the real estate technology (“PropTech”) industry. Founded in 2015, MetaProp’s investment team has invested in 175+ technology companies across the real estate value chain. The firm manages multiple funds for both financial and strategic real estate investors that represent a pilot- and test-ready sandbox of 20+ billion square feet across every real estate asset type and global market. The firm’s investment activities are complemented by pioneering community leadership including the PropTech Place innovation hub, MetaProp Accelerator at Columbia University programs, global events including NYC Real Estate Tech Week, and publications Global PropTech Confidence Index and PropTech 101.
About Moxxie Ventures
Moxxie Ventures is an early-stage venture fund focused on investing in software solutions to hard problems that make life and work better. The firm primarily invests at the seed stage, with pre-seed and Series A exposure as well. Moxxie is a generalist firm, with a focus on a few sectors including vertical applications of AI, health-tech, climate-tech and workplace productivity. They have raised four funds and current investors include Accolade, GEM, TIFF, Northwestern, Sapphire, Cendana, Foundry and a number of strategic family offices. The two GPs, Katie Stanton and Alex Roetter, are former operators from Google, Twitter, Color and Kitty Hawk and have almost 20 years of working together and co-investing.
SOURCE: PR Newswire
Featured Image: Credit: Demex
