Manitoba company to work with PartnerRe by using precision agriculture data to help improve risk modeling for insurers
Farmers won’t know the name, but they likely have done business with PartnerRe, and Farmers Edge is now, too.
One of the world’s larger companies in agricultural reinsurance is working with the Manitoba company to create more opportunities for crop insurance, says Farmers Edge chief executive officer Wade Barnes.
The partnership with PartnerRe will use precision agriculture data to help improve risk modelling for insurers, giving those companies real data from potential farm customers and from the regions covered.
Barnes said private insurers that are underwritten by PartnerRe will have a better idea of the risk and reality of farm production and be able to offer better tailored products.
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“We see independent crop insurance companies getting into the business and thriving and this should create more opportunities for them and for other companies to compete in the area,” said Barnes.
Farmers Edge will provide the data and enrol acres into its precision ag system from PartnerRe’s retail and, potentially, government insurance customers.
The insurance and data project will cover Canada, the United States and Eastern Europe this year. Africa, Western Europe and Argentina will follow in 2019.
“There are large parts of the world that have no (crop) insurance at all. Brazil has about 10 percent insured,” said Barnes.
“This can bring a lot of stability to agriculture in those parts of the world, and precision agriculture can help those farmers improve their operations.”
Farmers Edge’s data strategy was to add value to farmers’ operations, said Barnes, “not just yield.”
“In the fall of 2014, when we started this different strategy, we said the data is valuable,” he said.
“You don’t have to sell your information. You can sell your competitive edge.”
Barnes feels that while government crop insurance programs “bring a lot of value, they might not be the right fit for every farm.”
The concept is that data from the farm will improve agronomy, improving margins from higher yields and lower costs,create specialized markets for data-tagged production and now get potentially better insurance rates.
“And that makes banks more competitive to get those farmers’ business because they tend to have their risk managed better,” he said.
“That is the value we find from (farmers’) investments in precision ag.”
The exclusive agreement is a global, four-year deal and the companies say they hope to see 20 million acres enrolled in the programs.
