Yokahu, an insurtech and Lloyd’s Coverholder, has announced the launch of a parametric risk exchange platform for the London insurance and reinsurance market, aiming to seamlessly connect brokers, carriers, and data providers to streamline parametric risk transfer transactions.
Yokahu believes that its launch of cat-risk.com will reduce friction in the market when it comes to trading in parametric insurance or reinsurance arrangements, while ensuring fast, transparent payouts when catastrophic events strike.The company says that it has built its new parametric risk exchange with a goal to enhance the market, rather than disrupt it, transforming what can be a slow and high-friction process to allow for rapid quote and bind times, while offering real-time risk assessment, pricing and importantly seamless capacity allocation to parametric opportunities.
The cat-risk.com platform will enable multiple carriers to co-insure parametric risks that are placed on the platform, based upon the individual risk appetites of capital providers.
So it appears that capital will be able to express its risk appetite for deals, to win access to parametric opportunities through Yokahu’s new parametric risk exchange.
As a Lloyd’s Coverholder, Yokahu will administer each carrier’s portfolio separately and discreetly, allocating capacity to the deal presented using “BiPar principles in a manner that reflects the traditions of trading at Lloyd’s but in a digital context,” the company said.
Yokahu explained that, “This allows more risk carriers to enter the parametric climate resilience market with smaller initial lines and reduced portfolio volatility.”
Policy triggering will be automated through the digital parametric risk exchange, with any claims instantly presented for approval to carriers reducing claim payment times to as little as 48 hours.
The platform has been launched with support for extreme weather risks, including hurricanes, typhoons, and storms, with limits up to $5 million per transaction, but the goal is to include earthquake coverage and higher limits, as well as enhanced risk insights from data partners.
Yokahu said the platform launch already sees leading data providers such as Reask involved, while it is being supported by major capacity providers and top-tier brokers as well.
Tim McCosh, Founder & CEO of Yokahu, commented, “Parametric insurance has long been heralded as a solution for fast, reliable disaster payouts, but inefficiencies in placement have hindered adoption. With cat-risk.com, we are delivering on the promise of parametric insurance – removing barriers, improving accessibility, and ensuring resilience in the face of growing climate and disaster risks.”
Farid Tejani, Co-Founder of Yokahu, added, “This is about evolution, not revolution. cat-risk.com enhances the existing parametric insurance ecosystem, making transactions smoother, data integration stronger, and payouts faster. We believe this will help unlock the full potential of parametric insurance for businesses, governments, and communities worldwide.”
Yokahu CFO, Carsten Wolheimer, further stated, “cat-risk.com is an important step forward in combining financial markets expertise with innovative parametric risk transfer. By streamlining transactions and leveraging robust financial market principles, we are creating a more efficient, transparent, and scalable solution for disaster risk transfer, fully aligned with Yokahu’s vision for a digital insurance marketplace that delivers real impact.”
Digitally connecting parametric risk transfer opportunities from cedents more directly and efficiently to risk capital providers is a natural evolution for the market and one that has been gaining increasing attention, with other platforms already available that seek to address this.
Yokahu, with its Lloyd’s Coverholder focus, can channel parametric risk through its platform to Lloyd’s capital providers, which could help to make parametric opportunities more readily accessible, while also enabling cedents to get access to broader panels and more competitive capital, as well as offering faster payouts and digital monitoring of risk transfer arrangements.
