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This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

We aim to solve the issue in climate adaptation of actually quantifying different climate risks and their impact on a company. So, for example, whether that’s flood, wind, or the range of ten different climate perils that we model, we aim to understand and quantify the actual impact of that.

The second aspect of climate adaptation that we aim to solve for clients is being able to show the return on investment — this is a really powerful tool for being able to actually demonstrate the impacts of adaptation.

 If we don’t do anything about climate change and we don’t increase the resilience of properties, we will see increased losses due to the frequency and severity changes of climate risks.

What we have to do is we have to be investing in adaptation — otherwise, what we do is we start to strain the risk management system. Insurance premiums will increase because there are higher operating costs, there’s higher losses that companies and people will see every year, and ultimately that starts to put a stress on people as well, because the cost of living will go up. So this doesn’t just affect businesses, this affects people as well and systems.

Having worked in risk management a very long time, something that I’ve been able to see is the impact that good risk modelling can have on decision making. So by building the climate risk models that we’ve built at very high resolution, we’re able to understand property climate risk all around the world for assets and therefore empower our clients to make good decision making. That was something that I wanted to work more closely with companies on. That was really the genesis for creating our business.

That’s the really exciting part of being a founder in this space, is being able to bring the knowledge from one sector and apply it in an area where really it’s not been used before.

Well, first thing we do is we’re able to actually show you where your exposure is. So by loading your portfolio of locations into our platform, we geocode it — we’re able to actually show you where your exposure is in relation to all these different climate perils, which we then model against each individual location, both individually and overall you'll get a portfolio view of your risk. That’s the first thing. By understanding where your risk is, you could start to understand how to mitigate against it, how to diversify your portfolio.

The second phase is we look at the adaptation, so we model your risk with and without different adaptation strategies, and that starts to tell you really invaluable information about the different adaptation strategies that’ll have a bigger impact on that asset. So if you are facing a low-level flood risk, well, if you invest in flood defences, that’s going to make an enormous impact. Likewise for wind and strengthening a building’s roof. So we model assets with and without these adaptations very quickly and are able to understand how you can improve the resilience of your portfolio.

The client sectors we’re working in are really quite broad. That’s because anyone that has an interest in understanding climate risk for their property or their natural capital asset will have an interest in what we’re doing. For example, banking, the financial services sector, retail, insurance asset managers, they’re all key client areas for us. But alongside that, we also have clients in the natural capital sector, so those focused on nature-based solutions such as mangroves, salt marshes, forests etc, because all of these different asset classes we can model the climate risk for.

That’s a powerful story because we don’t really need to sell the software [to them]. It’s self-evident that the results coming out make sense to them. They can see the risk modelling, the resolution of it — the value is really in the results and the demonstration.

Honestly, I think the hardest thing to explain to clients is the level of complexity that goes into creating the models. It’s very easy to understand [at the] dashboard level, but actually that belies a whole load of complexity behind each different model. Every different peril we’re modeling — whether that’s tropical cyclone wind, ex-tropical cyclone, severe convective storm, sea level rise — they’re all modeled in a very individual way based on the needs of that particular peril. There’s an enormous amount of data and complexity behind it, you’re talking about billions of different data points that have gone into making that final decision on what we think is the quantification of your risk. So, I think the complexity that is definitely the hardest part for clients to delve into in detail.

I am quite a tenacious person, so to be honest, I haven’t ever felt like giving up. Of course there’s points when work is harder than others, and we have low points in any job. The thing that really motivates me is just seeing the positive impact that you’re having, not only on society in general and trying to improve resilience, but on the client directly. I like working with my clients and seeing the value they’re getting from something that we’ve built, we’ve created as part of a team.

And we’re seeing that actually it’s really making a valuable difference to them, whether that be saving them money, making them more resilient, helping them with a problem. I think that’s a key area actually — just seeing the value that you add in is a huge motivator.

I think patience is a key one. It takes time to build anything of any value. So don’t be worried that you’re kind of rushing it, you know, if you can afford to take your time. It’s okay to be patient.

Another one is getting feedback as well early on from clients. Whilst you might think that you can kind of go away and come back with a complete solution all in one go, that’s going to do exactly what the client wants — it’s very unlikely actually. The first version of whatever you’ve built is likely to just be that: a first version. So be prepared when you build that and show it to clients. Don’t be too precious about it, because it might get ripped up and then evolved into something completely new and better.

I’m seeing a lot of investment into natural capital, green capital solutions, which I think is a really positive thing. Having said that, I would like to see a lot more of that happening because I think it's not moving quick enough or far enough than what it could be moving at the moment.

Something that I realised moving from insurance to work more directly with companies and corporates is actually just the awareness of the solutions that are available out there. I actually think there’s very limited knowledge generally in many companies about what’s possible, and that’s something that we’ve been able to focus on at our company, where we’ve built a platform to model these risks to high resolution. It’s really powerful stuff. But I just think the awareness of it often isn’t there, that many people feel like they’re on their own. They don't know how to do it. They might get outsourced to other companies or brokers, but these solutions do exist and, I just encourage you to seek them out because they can really make a valuable difference to understanding climate risk in your business.

Can adaptech start-ups really put a number on adaptation ROI — and would doing so actually increase investment in adaptation?

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