Fairfax Brasil, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Canada’s Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, has collaborated with digital agriculture firm, Farmers Edge, to bring bespoke, data-driven crop insurance to growers in Brazil.
This landmark partnership between the two companies is expected to create new opportunities for growers to capitalise on their data with premium insurance products.
Brazil is the fourth largest food producer in the world, but according to Farmers Edge and Fairfax Brasil, growers often face challenges surrounding collecting and accessing the right data in order to enable efficient, sustainable and profitable farming.
Under the new partnership, Farmers Edge’s risk management platform, which is powered by field-centric data and artificial intelligence, is connected with premium insurance as the base for developing innovative solutions.
Wade Barnes, Farmers Edge Chief Executive Officer (CEO), commented: “At Farmers Edge, we’re committed to helping growers protect the economic viability of the farm. Only around 10 percent of growers in Brazil are insured today, putting most farms at risk of financial ruin.
“Through this partnership, we can seamlessly connect field data—which shows when crops were planted, combined, and harvested, or which crops have been damaged by weather events—with automated insurance processing to accelerate insurance operations and pay-outs, while also enabling growers to be more efficient, sustainable, and profitable.”
Farmers Edge states that it provides a unique solution that includes the hardware, software, analytics, and infrastructure needed for technology-driven agriculture. Via the partnership, clients are provided with an advanced field-level risk management platform, including: on-farm weather stations, telematics devices, daily satellite imagery, and a suite of exclusive digital tools, such as highly-precise predictive crop models and automatic crop health change detection, explains the company.
At the same time, Fairfax partners stand to gain increased visibility of the farms they cover to manage risk better, and to provide superior customer service to their clients. This will be achieved via automated claims processing, advanced claim analytics, cognitive reporting, and also new options to meet individual needs and parameters.
Bruno Camargo, Fairfax Brasil CEO, said: “This partnership with Farmers Edge is very strategic for Fairfax Brasil in automating manual, paper-based processes that slow down both growers and partners.
“With government insurance subsidy programs expected to grow 170% in 2020, growers in Brazil are looking for innovative, new insurance products that fit their specific needs, offer a safety net that many do not have today, and can accelerate new product and coverage creation.
“We are excited to be offering a precision and risk management platform that will enable our growers and partners to be more successful and profitable.”
