Firm Vows to Replace Weather Insurance with Online Risk Tool

A new company founded by members of the Google team is promising to replace what it says are “pricey and inflexible” insurance contracts that businesses now purchase to protect against lost revenue due to weather conditions with online contracts that can be “completely customized and priced in minutes and automatically settled without a claim.”

The San Francisco company, WeatherBill, bills itself as an online weather risk management firm. It claims to have developed tools that correlate a firm’s financial data with the weather in order to quantify weather’s impact on the bottom line.

“The information is often eye-opening and encourages businesses to consider a weather risk management approach, which we believe will soon be more than smart financial management — it will be a necessity,” says David Friedberg, CEO of WeatherBill.

According to Friedberg, in the U.S., 70 percent of businesses and up to 30 percent of the GDP are affected by weather. “That amounts to trillions of dollars of lost revenue each year, and as climate change creates increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, that number could rise dramatically,” he maintains.

“Until recently, companies looking to protect revenue from adverse weather used an insurance broker to purchase pricey and inflexible contracts with a time-consuming claims process. WeatherBill.com changes that with online weather contracts that can be completely customized and priced in minutes and automatically settled without a claim,” the company’s announcement stated.

“The introduction of WeatherBill marks the first time that any company, from a nationwide movie theatre chain to a single golf course, can easily and affordably protect their bottom line against weather risk,” the announcement continued.

WeatherBill.com says that various contract permutations are available, and, unlike traditional insurance, no proof of lost income is required.

Founded by Friedberg and several other former key members of the Google team, WeatherBill, Inc. is funded by New Enterprise Associates and Index Ventures.

Source: WeatherBill, Inc.
www.weatherbill.com