I’ve been avoiding putting together a list of predictions for 2010 (more on that later) but just couldn’t resist suggesting that 2010 could well be a breakout year for weather risk management. All of the conditions necessary have finally started to come together and with the worst of the 2008/2009 hysteria behind us (without passing judgement on the future direction of markets), companies (and hopefully individuals) will start to wake up and respond to the risks and opportunities inherent in weather variability. I wouldn’t be surprised if weather risk was one of the top three risks faced by the vast majority of (non-financial) corporations, perhaps even the most important risk in some cases, and of the same order of magnitude as liquidity, foreign exchange, commodity and interest rate risk – all risk categories for which massive global markets in risk pricing and transfer exist. Weather in this regard remains significantly underdeveloped:
(via Ben Smith, First Enercast Financial) For example the Department of Commerce estimates that more than $1 trillion of U.S. economic activity is exposed to weather. Even if a small fraction of new risk is hedged through derivative contracts, 2010 will be a very good year for these markets.
The massive costs incurred in much of the northern hemisphere over the last few weeks due to heavy snowfalls and cold temperatures are just one more example of how important a factor in economic outcomes weather risk can be. For example, just take the exceptional – and uninsured – costs incurred by local authorities and airport operators across the UK for snow removal, sanding, salting, loss of revenues, etc. Previously, a manager of a company (or government entity) who suffered an exceptional weather-related loss could shrug their shoulders and plausibly say “it was out of my hands.” In a way that would be impossible if for example their organization suffered a massive loss because their buildings or equipment perished in a fire and they were not insured. In that scenario, shareholders or taxpayers would be incandescent with rage at the incompetent risk management of the managers. Not managing weather risks is no different in substance (now that appropriate weather insurance and derivatives are increasingly widely available), only remaining so in perception as awareness lags.
Of course I am biased, having invested in Weatherbill, which is at the vanguard of transforming weather risk markets:
(via J. Scott Mathews, WeatherEX LLC) The weather market was built upside down, which is quite a feat, even for financial engineers. What we mean is that it started on the wholesale level without any retail underpinnings. It started out like a castle in the air…The changes coming in 2010 for the weather derivative market will be keyed “from the bottom up.” Solutions companies such as Guaranteed Weather and Weatherbill who bring management choices to “ground level” risk holders are helping to complete a strong base to keep that castle from crashing on us.
The difference between weather derivatives (Weatherbill.com) (or any other new risk management tool) and say books (Amazon.com) is that risk management tools need to be ’sold’ – there is a learning curve, however shallow; and while most people instinctively understand and can conceptualize their weather risks, their survival instincts – honed by decades of doing business with rapacious financial services firms – and fear of ‘getting their eyes ripped out’ means that they are understandably cautious when considering using weather risk management instruments for the first time.
This is where Weatherbill’s business model I think is particularly well adapted to the opportunity: on the one hand, they have a very modern (open) approach to pricing: anyone can go to their website and play around in their pricing ’sandbox’. Try doing that ten years ago when you wanted to price up a complex FX or interest rate option. Basically it was build your own model or keep sending pricing request to your favorite sales person (who would then have to go beg the trader for a price, and in addition to the regular parameters, the client’s identity, the salesperson and the trader’s mood would also be imputed into the price. That is of course if he felt like making one.) On the other hand, (and this is something that has evolved over the past couple years) Weatherbill has aggressively sought out distribution partners – insurance brokers, industry platforms (eg travel sites), etc. – as trusted providers to their respective customer bases, they are ideally positioned to help their customers manage their weather risks by leveraging Weatherbill’s platform. I first wrote about this a few months ago, and since then they have signed up a number of new and significant partners.
I love skiing and my family take a season pass at Les Trois Vallees. Obviously weather risk is central to running or enjoying a ski resort. While there are many different types of risk you could look at in the context of a ski resort, in the interests of simplicity (ease of understanding/customer acceptance) and maximum pain relief, there are two risks that I would have loved to have had an embedded hedge for in our season ticket (and I suspect the same would go for someone buying a week-long pass for their holiday, in fact they would probably be even more sensitive/appreciative.)
Not enough snow to ski risk: ie not that the snow is great or this or that…the basic risk that the pistes are closed. For most modern ski resorts this is actually a function of temperature and not precipitation, as they use snow-making machine to lay down a base. Temperature risk is much easier to measure and price (than snowfall) and has much lower geographic variability ie you don’t need a weather station on every piste on the mountain.
Rain risk: ie the only time it is absolutely unpleasant to ski is when it is raining. Also, rain typically doesn’t help the existing snowpack, making skiing after rain often unpleasant as well.
Using Weatherbill to hedge their risk, Les Trois Vallees could offer a ski-pass that reimbursed me for every rainy day and for every day say less than 80% of their runs were open due to lack of snow. In an age of increasing climate uncertainty (or perception thereof) I am 100% certain this would help them market (and sell more) season tickets. And for week-long tickets, it would be a great marketing tool for advance sales (with significantly positive cashflow benefits), and great for improving the user experience. Imagine a vacationer whose week in the Alps is ruined by 5 days of torrential rain…getting their money back on the lift tickets (irrespective of whether or not they braved the elements) would go a very long way to having them consider giving it another try next year.
Of course this is but one example, I’m sure all of you can think of hundreds more. In fact it might be harder to think of services or businesses that are completely immune to the weather. So really, what are you waiting for? Start hedging!
A second issue was that the processor, although a key component of personal computers, was only a component. To effectively market this component to the PC buyer it was important to work with the manufacturer of computers. After all, the processor was buried deep inside the computer and despite its significance it was hard to tell which processor the PC contained before it was purchased.
Carter and his team studied successful consumer marketing techniques and examined tactics used by well-known companies supplying a component or ingredient of a finished product, like NutraSweet™, Teflon™ and Dolby™. They also began a variety of marketing experiments and soon began envisioning how a branded ingredient program would play out in the computer industry.
Key to this strategy was gaining consumer’s confidence in Intel as a brand and demonstrating the value of buying a microprocessor from the industry’s leading company, the pioneer of the microprocessor. At the suggestion of its advertising agency, Dahlin Smith and White, Intel adopted a new tag line for their advertising: “Intel. The computer inside.” Using this to position the important role of the processor and at the same time associating Intel with “safety,” “leading technology” and “reliability,” the company’s following-and consumer confidence-would hopefully soar. That would create a new “pull” for Intel-based PCs. Later, this tagline was shortened to “Intel Inside.”
The important role of the microprocessor was being communicated, but to be truly effective the ingredient status of the microprocessor needed to be dealt with. In 1991 Carter launched the Intel Inside® coop marketing program. The heart of the program was an incentive-based cooperative advertising program. Intel would create a co-op fund where it would take a percentage of the purchase price of processors and put it in a pool for advertising funds. Available to all computer makers, it offered to cooperatively share advertising costs for PC print ads that included the Intel logo. The benefits were clear. Adding the Intel logo not only made the OEM’s advertising dollar stretch farther, but it also conveyed an assurance that their systems were powered by the latest technology. The program launched in July 1991. By the end of that year, 300 PC OEMs had signed on to support the program.
The PC business ultimately was redefined by this – moving to a barbell of high volume commoditized assemblers/distributors (Dell) and high value specialist niche players (Alienware) and of course the fully integrated hardware/software approach of Apple. The same thing will happen in financial services over the next 10-20 years. Only the ‘Intel inside’ isn’t hardware (except maybe for some high end high frequency trading applications where I think you’ll see people starting to design and sell custom chipsets…) but financial widget providers. FaaS or Haas or RMaaS. (For the few remaining bankers that read my blog and are scratching their heads, these are not tickers or Bloomberg functions – or if they are that’s not what I’m referring to – but acronyms for Finance or Hedging or Risk Management ‘as a Service’…) These will in turn get mashed up by enterprising distributors and channel managers to offer all sort of customer (from the head to the tail) the package of financial services and products that is right for them. This is what the mega-fauna of global finance (retail, commercial and investment banks in particular but also life and property insurance companies, brokers, asset managers, etc.) do now, in house, although the concept of “open architecture” on a fund management platform for example is a sort of distant evolutionary predecessor.
A more apt existing business model along these lines – that practitioners in the retail trading and FX markets will be particularly familiar with – is white labeling. Indeed companies like Saxo Bank have done extremely well with very sophisticated and industrialized white label partnership programs. You want to offer your customers trading on FX, FX Options, Forwards, Spot Gold & Silver, CFDs, Stocks, Futures, etc? Just plug into their machine and you’ve got yourself a trading engine and infrastructure. You want to offer your customers weather insurance? No problem – just grab Weatherbill’s new white label solution:
The WeatherBill White Label platform enables any third party to offer weather coverage to their clients, written on their paper, and using their distribution channels. It is an innovative end-to-end technology platform for pricing, transacting, settling, and managing weather risk. WeatherBill White Label creates new revenue streams and growth opportunities for insurance companies and weather derivative dealers, allowing them to leverage WeatherBill’s technology to offer fully automated, customizable weather coverage to their clients.
For any company who has customers that could use weather insurance in the context of their relationship with this company, this would seem to be a no-brainer; you don’t need to re-invent the wheel, weather algorithms and derivatives processing are probably not your core business and/or is not where you want to deploy resources. Outsource it. Add a plug-in. Did you write your own mapping software to show where your offices are on your ‘Contact Us’ page? No, you used Google or Multimap etc. and integrated it into your site and/or your service. It’s as simple as that, and makes just as much sense.
Ok full disclosure: I just totally made up the silly marketing claim in the headline…but the good folks at Weatherbill have just launched a new, sexier, easier to navigate website. Check it out and please send them feedback – the good, but especially the bad and ugly – either in the comments here or on their blog.
I’m going to miss the farmer though…we hardly knew him at all.
As you may recall, a couple months ago Weatherbill announced a partnership with Priceline, underwriting a promotion they ran that would reimburse the cost of your holiday package if it rained more than half the days during your stay.
In June, 12% of Priceline’s site traffic clicked on a promotion. While the Sunshine Guarantee promotion may attract only a niche audience (0.2% of Priceline shoppers), those who do click on this promotion are highly likely to convert – an impressive 24% of Sunshine clickers will complete a booking. Despite attracting relatively few clickers, it resonated with its audience and led to strong conversion rates, showing just how effective a smaller, targeted promotion can be.
I’m sure we’ll see more and more of these sorts of embedded derivatives in weather-sensitive consumer products. While you may go to the time and effort of directly hedging your wedding, the average person – even if they were aware of an easy-to-use product like Weatherbill – probably will be too busy/apathetic/forgetful to hedge something smaller – like a day out golfing. But embed the coverage into the product (or at least make it as easy as ticking a box) and I think demand will be very high. The days of “NO RAIN CHECKS” are surely soon behind us…
Well it seems that these same good folks have lost a bit of their nerve as 2008 hurricane season starts and the metaphorical roulette wheel starts to slow (from the Guardian):
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway fund has taken a $224m (£113m) bet that Florida will not be hit by devastating hurricanes in the coming months. That is the amount the US state has agreed to pay Berkshire upfront in return for the fund coming to its rescue if hurricane damages cost more than $25bn this season, which runs from June 1 to November 1.
If damages exceed $25bn, Berkshire will buy $4bn in 30-year bonds issued by the state. The money will ensure Florida does not run into cash flow problems in the clean-up. Florida will have to buy the bonds back; the interest rate is 6.5%. State officials have agreed to the deal, even though they admit there is only about a 3% chance of damages going so high, because they believe the credit crunch could limit their access to funds if this is a particularly bad hurricane season.
So let me get this straight. Basically Florida lined up a loanshark, just in case they couldn’t pay their bookie if their bet didn’t come in. It looks like a pretty clever deal for Vinnie Mr. Buffett: if the terms have been correctly reported, effectively he is being paid $224mn for a ‘knock-in’ credit spread + interest rate lock. On $4bn of bonds, if the knock-in is exercised, the premium should protect Buffett up to c. 7% before he starts incurring mark-to-market losses on the overall trade. I’m no expert and it’s late so I’m not even going to try to hack a model together, but it seems like this is a pretty good deal for the man from Omaha. (And btw, a derivative by any stretch of the imagination…)
It’s also probably a relatively prudent thing for Florida to do, even though they obviously shouldn’t be in such a dire position to start with…and does beg the question, is this the best deal they could do? I can’t get the image out of my head of some hapless middle aged gambler, knuckles white as his nails dig deep into the felt, all the blood drained from his face, beads of sweat gathering on his pencil moustache, as the terror washes over him with the realization that the dice moving in slow motion down the table…might just come up snake eyes…
Under the limited-time Sunshine Guaranteed promotion launched today, customers who book a qualifying Priceline vacation package between June 2 and July 17, 2008 and travel between July 1 and September 7, 2008 will be eligible for a refund if their vacation is rained out. For full details on Priceline’s Sunshine Guaranteed promotion, visit: http://www.priceline.com/promo/sunshine_guarantee.asp
Brett Keller, priceline.com’s Chief Marketing Officer commented, “Ten years ago with our Name Your Own Price® launch, and more recently with our elimination of booking fees on published-price domestic and international airfares, priceline.com has demonstrated a commitment to continually innovate in order to get great deals for our customers. Now we’re also offering them great weather. Best of all, these Sunshine Guaranteed vacations are available at the same great prices we offer for all of our packages. Our customers can book their Sunshine Guaranteed trips and rest assured that there’s a silver lining waiting if Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate.”
There is no additional charge to book a Sunshine Guaranteed vacation package. Qualifying vacation packages must be 3-8 days in length. Travel must commence at least 12 days after a package is purchased. If it rains more than 0.50 inches per day on half or more of the days of a Sunshine Guaranteed vacation (including travel days), priceline.com will provide a refund for 100% of the cost of airfare, hotel, rental car and attractions and services components of the Sunshine Guaranteed vacation package.
Well not exactly but pretty damn close: replace 23 red with frequency and intensity of storms hitting population centers in Florida and it is spot on. Only with 23 Red, at least the probability is easy to price.
Of course, ‘gambling’ is illegal in the Sunshine State and if any resident wanted to offer or take odds on the likelyhood of a hurricane hitting their home town, of course they would be breaking the law. The irony of the state taking a giant punt with their taxpayer’s dollars is of course almost certainly lost on the state government…
One of the most significant business and economic opportunities that will arise out of the changing techno-economic paradigm over the coming ten to twenty years is the rethinking and transformation of the business of insurance. The rise and rise of the risk quark will inevitably reshape the landscape of risk transfer and mitigation. But it won’t be easy. Indeed their will be many backward steps along the way as the trinity of inertia, vested interests, and outdated regulatory frameworks conspire to perpetuate the current model despite it’s increasingly obvious failings.
How else to explain the recent de facto nationalization of property insurance in the State of Florida? (from The Economist:)
…insurance companies are shedding customers as fast as they can…
…The slack is being picked up by a fast-growing state-run company, Citizens Property Insurance. Citizens is acting as the insurer of last resort, underwritten by the Florida Hurrican Catastrophe Fund, a pool financed by the state. In January the state decided it could resolve the crisis by expanding Citizens and making it more competitive with private companies. It is now by far the state’s largest home-insurance provider, with 1.3m clients.
…And by allowing Citizens to grow so big, in the eyes of many agents, the state is exposing itself to tremendous financial risk in the event of a large-scale disaster. Unlike private companies, which can seek reinsurance on the global market where risk is less concentrated, the state would have to go to its own taxpayers if a huge storm struck.
Now whether or not the state should bear the risk of weather-related property damage is in my opinion a political debate. What I find appalling is not that a democratically elected government decides (or not) to underwrite this risk, but that they do so in a completely reckless, opaque and market-distorting way. By not allowing the market to work – by pricing risk appropriately based on the market-determined probabilities of certain outcomes – the result is that the economy cannot optimally allocate resources and that the true cost of any subsidy is at once much higher (than it would otherwise be) and completely opaque. Furthermore it is unaccounted for: I doubt that the Florida government accounts reflect the enormous contigent liability they have committed their citizens to.
Just as physicists and chemists have conservation of mass and energy, so to are risk quarks ‘conserved’. Risk transfer and optimization is highly useful and increases overall wealth and utility in an economic system. But risks – like mass and energy – must be conserved. Call it the 1st Law of Financial Dynamics. (Park’s Law? anyone? anyone? … ) One of the fundamental problems of the current risk management paradigm, is that it encourages – often with regulatory and governmental connivance – the dissimulation of ‘inconvenient’ high energy risk quarks.
What do I mean by ‘inconvenient’ risk quarks? These are the elements of risk in any system that when ‘removed’, allow all (or at least all incumbent) constituencies to have only positive outcomes. My contention is that risk is conserved so these elements are never truly removed, but only hidden from view. Worse, frequently the financial physics of segregating and obscuring these elements most often leads to an expensive and suboptimal distribution of risk throughout the system. Indeed -whilst I don’t know whether he would agree with any of my analysis – I believe that Warren Buffet’s view of (financial) derivatives as weapons of mass destruction, is credible only in the context of their (derivatives) bastardized deployment within a system that does not want or allow them to exist unfettered or transparently. The existing industry and governmental complex is applying the rules of classical finance to a new quantum world. With alarming consequences.
And don’t even get me started on sub-prime… (Remember always that gambling is illegal in the US. Well…only as long as it is done in a transparent and robust fashion. Embed it, hidden, within the existing fabric of business and of course it’s ok. Messy yes. But not threatening to the existing socio-institutional paradigm.)
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) One of the fundamental problems of the current risk management paradigm, is that it encourages – often with regulatory and governmental connivance – the dissimulation of ‘inconvenient’ high energy risk quarks.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=23107b23-5541-4b43-8211-fd69b22246e8)
