AXA Climate extends parametric drought insurance solutions

AXA Climate, a consulting services and parametric insurance company headquartered in Paris, France, announced that it will be expanding its partnership with Planet Labs PBC, a technology provider of Earth data and insights, to further advance its parametric insurance products through Planet Labs’ satellite imagery and data and to protect farmers and others in argilculture against the impacts of drought. 

According to AXA Climate, drought and heat waves significantly impact crop yields worldwide, and extreme climate can drastically widen the gap between global supply and demand, resulting in higher risk of food insecurity. AXA Climate notes that France did not see any rainfall for 32 days between January and February of 2023, and many European countries are currently experiencing rainfall and soil moisture deficits. The European Drought Observatory reports that 26.1% of the EU is experiencing “warning” conditions and 3.7% are seeing “alert” conditions as of May 2023.

AXA Climate specializes in offering drought insurance services that assess crop yield and losses, and its insurance products enable automatic compensation and support to farmers, suppliers or processors within days after a drought risk period. 

“With Planet’s unique satellite data, AXA Climate has been able to provide a high quality index insurance coverage service for farmers and cooperatives. We can now act quickly to help farmers and stakeholders combat the major threat of drought to agriculture around the world,” said Antoine Denoix, CEO of AXA Climate, in a press release statement. 

Planet Labs’ fleet of 200 satellites collects daily imagery and creates unique datasets and insights. In combination with additional public satellite information, Planet Labs provides observations and insights that measure the changing health and conditions of areas on Earth’s surface. These observations include Planet Labs’ Planetary Variables Soil Water Content feed, which provides a detailed measurement of soil water volume at a high resolution in specific areas of interest down to a depth of approximately 5 centimeters. AXA Climate leverages the Soil Water Content data to assess the risk associated with drought-related losses, specifically crop yields, by observing the reliable indicator of water availability for crops that is closely associated with yield variability.

“These Planetary Variables provide accurate, daily, global measurements. AXA Climate is using our Soil Water Content variable to monitor, and then provide automatic payments if the soil moisture gets below a certain percent for more than a number of days. This offers a powerful service that can support global farmers in critical situations,” explained Will Marshall, CEO of Planet Labs, in a statement. “Abstracting out critical measurables from satellite data enables our customers to reach larger value, enable new applications and thus more customers to get value from Planet’s data.”