Australian Startup Reask Forecasting Climate Catastrophes

Australia-based deep science startup Reask calculates climate catastrophe risk modelling through data, technology, and high-performance computing.

At Singapore’s InsurTech Connect Asia 2022 last week, Australia’s Reask joined Austrade to speak on the technology behind their climate catastrophe risk modelling and its potential in the industry.

Reask’s co-founder Nick Hassam originally met climate scientist Thomas Loridan at the Conference on Catastrophe Insurance in Asia in 2017, where they developed the concept behind the InsurTech startup. The company has since been working with insurance companies from around the world to calculate risk metrics for climate catastrophes.

“We basically help insurance organisations to understand, quantify and subsequently mitigate that risk by building models to understand that risk and how it is they should price that risk. There was an existing demand, but that demand wasn’t really being met with novel or modern technologies and all of it was using backward-looking statistical methods. Whereas, there are new and modern methodologies such as broader AI and machine learning that bring a lot more to the game and so we were bringing a new way of looking at things and novel ways of addressing these particular challenges,” Hassam shared.

Reask did face some difficulties in the early stages since their launch, widening their reach and raising capital, but has now since solidified their presence in the global climate risk analysis industry.

“Because we are a very deep science organisation, there’s a very significant hurdle for organisations to overcome to actually accept our view of risk to help them guide and make decisions,” Hassam commented, “They could be making very big decisions based on the type of information we are providing to them, you know billions of dollars is being spent in the industries we work in, so we need a lot of trust and faith in our products.”

Now backed by TenCent, Reask’s team is working to expand across Australia, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. One of Reask’s clients is AXA, a French multinational insurance company, and one of the top three largest in the world.

As around 95% of their clientele come from outside Australia, this move will enable Reask to provide their solutions to multinational insurance and reinsurance firms in Singapore, Europe, the US, and across the globe.

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