Climate Confident

De-risking Climate Solutions: The Power of Insurtech Gateway's Unique Approach

May 10, 2023 Tom Raftery / Stephen Brittain Season 1 Episode 120
Climate Confident
De-risking Climate Solutions: The Power of Insurtech Gateway's Unique Approach
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Show Notes Transcript

Hey everyone, Tom Raftery here, and I'm thrilled to share this episode of the Climate Confident podcast with you! I had an engaging conversation with Stephen Brittain, Director and co-founder of Insurtech Gateway, a company focused on supporting and incubating insurtech startups that address climate challenges.

In this episode, Stephen discusses:

  • How Insurtech Gateway helps early-stage climate founders de-risk their business ideas with a unique platform for idea development and experienced mentors
  • The challenges of finding the right projects and startups to support in the climate space
  • Some fascinating examples of innovative startups Insurtech Gateway has helped, including FloodFlash, Kita, and a carbon credits protection initiative
  • The importance of collaboration with climate investors and building strong partnerships to help innovators succeed in their climate goals
  • Stephen's own journey from product designer to insurtech entrepreneur and his vision for the future of Insurtech Gateway

For any early-stage climate insurtechs - Applications are now open for a new wave of climate insurtechs to join Insurtech Gateway’s incubator. Applications close on the 5th of July but start dates are flexible. Those currently in accelerators or venture builders can apply now, then join Insurtech Gateway when ready.

Find out more here and apply here.

Also, be sure to follow Insurtech Gateway on LinkedIn.

This conversation was a true eye-opener into the world of insurtech and the potential it has for driving climate innovation. If you're a climate founder looking for support or just interested in learning more about this exciting space, this episode is for you!

And you can check out the video version of this podcast on YouTube here.

Remember to subscribe to the Climate Confident podcast for more inspiring conversations with experts, innovators, and leaders in the climate space. Thanks for listening!

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Credits
Music credits - Intro by Joseph McDade, and Outro music for this podcast was composed, played, and produced by my daughter Luna Juniper

Stephen Brittain:

The market you know, it's a timing and size thing where, generally you can look to an and an analytical consulting team to give you an answer or read a report and find a statistic that says, generally everything's got seven zeros behind it being a billion or a trillion. So generally the market sizing is never a problem. It's just is it now. And the wonderful thing about climate innovation is kind of, everything's now, isn't it?

Tom Raftery:

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast. The number one podcast, showcasing best practices in climate emission, reductions and removals. And I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice, to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi everyone. Welcome to episode 120 of the Climate Confident Podcast. My name is Tom Raftery, and before we kick off today's show, I just want to take a quick moment to express my sincere gratitude to all of this podcast's, amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping the podcast going, and I'm truly grateful for each and every one of you. If you are not already a supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like-minded individuals. Who are passionate about climate supporting the podcast is easy and affordable. With options starting as low as just three euros, which is less than the cost of a cup of coffee, and your support will make a huge difference in keeping this podcast going strong. To become a supporter, simply click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode, or visit tiny url.com/climate pod. Now without further ado, with me on the show today, I have my special guest, Steven. Steven, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Stephen Brittain:

Thank you, Tom. Delighted to be here. My name is Steven Brittain and I'm the co-founder and director of a firm called InsureTech Gateway. We're based in London, uk, and, we run a, Venture builder and early stage investment fund to help climate innovators make rapid progress to launch their ideas.

Tom Raftery:

Okay, nice. And you said the company's name was InsureTech Gateway. Does that mean that you have a focus on InsureTech?

Stephen Brittain:

I know it's, it, it is given away in a name, wasn't it, Tom? Exactly. It's

Tom Raftery:

nothing gets past me, Steve. Nothing gets past me.

Stephen Brittain:

What it said, said, are we interpret the term InsureTech and you're familiar with MedTech and FinTech. Of course. It's a, the moniker, so technologies around insurance. And so one I've got before you start blinking and, and thinking this is snooze time. I think over the last six, seven years we've understood the power of insurance and risk tran, particularly risk transfer models to, to de-risk projects, to de-risk the outcomes of projects. So actually, we, we realized that we should be looking externally to sectors like climate innovation to make things happen rather than internally into the industry. So this is, this is the kind of the, the latest wave of insurtech is, how do we enable the world by de-risking, you know, fantastic new ideas.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. So for people listening who might not, be au fait, give us a InsureTech 1 0 1. You know what, what's a typical InsureTech company doing?

Stephen Brittain:

Well, one of the reasons it's so interesting is it's very hard to define a typical InsureTech company, but okay, if I may, I, I'll talk in principles and then I can give you some examples. Super. So I've got, I thought I'd write down a how to bluff your way in InsureTech, for your listeners in case you ever find yourself, pretending that you've, done more homework than you have. and sound familiar. What, what took, what took me an hour to pull together. Maybe you could do in five minutes. The, the misunderstanding about the insurance sector is, I think is, is most people don't have a deep understanding about how it works in the same way we don't understand how electricity really works or, you know, in these other aspects. And I think one of the, if I took you, I've got, I wrote down five things that everybody should know and I'll try to do it in a couple of minutes for you. Great. Is that, the insurance sector has more data about climate change than any other group in the world. They have been protecting cities, transport systems from extreme weather, from droughts, from hurricanes, from all the, you know, the rapid weather events and from all sorts of other cataclysms for as long as as long as any of us have been around, trying to innovate. And it's, it's about some of the, the InsureTechs are releasing some of that data and finding ways of helping that accelerate innovations in, you know, new areas, such as ways of enabling communities to adapt to climate change through to enabling the financing of alternative energy systems like electric vehicles or solar power systems. It's to understand what the prediction of energy conversion is from sunlight, the risk against the utilities that we're trying to install. And how you can create complete business models so you can raise funds and that a lot of that data lives and a data scientist who create live within the insurance community. And so that's myth number one. Okay. There's, there's a, you know, myth number two I fundamentally believe that when you are pitching your idea for investment, and let's say you've got a, an idea to put electric vehicles, you know, electric battery, electric vehicle, a solar power project. It could be all sorts of aspects of climate innovation. The thing that holds back an investor decision is risk. It's the it's never been done before. How can you guarantee it be done on time? How can you guarantee the yield of a new technology like this when all these ifs and buts are all things that can be transferred to a warranty or a guarantee? I found a group with a balance sheet of half a trillion dollars who have said that if I fail to deliver, they will step in and resolve the situation. So these, you know, this wave of radical new paradigms that are coming to market, I, I believe there's a lot of people saying, gosh, if only this had been done before, this would be so easy to approve. Mm-hmm. And I, and I think that by tapping into the insurance market, I mean, in the same way that they're enabling areas like crypto theft and crypto hacking and, and, you know, and you know, cyber, you know, cyber technologies to be advanced, I think we could do the same thing with climate technology. And it's the willingness of the insurer to step forward and say, I'll take some of the risk so that the project investor has, has some peace of mind that this might happen. And if it doesn't, we're not gonna lose anything. Right? So this is why I, it's good to have insurers as friends. I'm looking down to my notes as I warned you earlier. And what I've learned by talking to people in field, and when I say in field, it's particularly learning around flood mitigations and areas around extreme weather, is that the data science of insurance is, is much more about prevention than is about resolution. So the old mentality of I need an insurance product because, you know, if the worst happens, It's because InsureTech so data centric. It's, it's much, all those things that we, we hear about predictive technologies, predictive data, ai now apply that to risk and realize that what we can really do now is warn a community that a flood is coming, that a hurricane is coming. To the, to the point of that, that in community can respond, we can warn a car, we can warn a motorist that their battery's about to fail. We can warn a, we can warn a telegraph pole that it's about to have an impact with truck hitting it. I mean, I'm, I'm really being, I'm playing this ahead to all that figure about when you can see the future, right? You can then respond in a different way. And the data, the deep rich data now being made dynamic in InsureTech means that most of the smarts are done before the event happens. Meaning that the, the equation is actually much less now. So we are backing businesses that are educating people about floods and and drought to the point now that the, the amount of capital required to cover the actual risk in the event of a real loss is so reduced that it's made it accessible to groups who have never been able to get protection before. So the smarts are in prevention. Yeah. So I hope to share a couple of examples with you on that in a moment. And at the tail end of disaster recovery and restorations similarly, Been so back to a, a lot of my examples are in mitigation cuz they're more advanced in our portfolio, but we can talk about other things that are early stage later. But equally when you know that the flood is here or the hurricane is here, or whenever the catastrophic events come through, you can ready, you can be ready for rapid implementation. Mm-hmm. And we've got, so the, a typical and the anatomy of a, of a major flood, you know, you get a you get six hours notice. There's complete disruption, and then, you know, there's a whole displacement of people. And then you start to see the humanitarian cost. You see the breakdown of local economy and business. You see the, the problems of water. You see the inability of an economy to return. And what that means is speed, not protection. It means in three hours we were there. So that the automated payment systems are far what have been proven in many cases to be more effective than aid systems, than NGOs being there in 48 hours, an insurance system can be there in an hour and can a deployed capital and readied immediate response. In fact, they could do it as the wave hits. They're already dispersing funds in an automated reaction. I mean, this stuff is phenomenal when you see it modeled. And we've got some of the, we've been supporting some of the pilots that are looking at rapid, you know, prevention and rapid response. And I believe a lot of those, those principles can be transferred to many other climate sectors. Okay, cool. And I said I pro, I, I've gone rather intensely into my notes, so the last one you'll be pleased to hear. The last thing I wanted to share is to be a catalyst for cheap lending. And this is something I wish I knew more about, but it's, very easy for you and I to borrow to get a mortgage on our homes. In the simplest, the simplest analogy here, because we can, our properties value can be defined and agreed with a bank. We can get that insured in the event of a, you know, building insurance will protect a lender against loss and we can go to a bank. And this might be a bad week to, to suggest this, but you can get a pretty affordable loan to the point where we might have up to 90% borrowed on our asset. Other countries, particularly developing world, don't have any of these luxuries. So, an African, a farmer in Africa or India can't borrow 90% to buy a farm. They just can't do it cuz they don't have anything like this structure. But in there is that thin layer of risk transfer. It, it's the insurance product. So I believe that, and sorry, more than I believe I'm supporting pilots of groups who are helping small hold farmers insure their yield, insure their crop, insure their tractors, their herd, and then they can, on the back of that, they can say they've got an asset that is recognized and in theory can go and then attract cheap lending. So instead of going to a local loan shark, and paying 50%, and their second daughter to get their farm away. Yeah. They can get their sort of reasonable price and they can start thinking about augmenting their equipment, their new filtration systems and new planting systems and new tractor because they can borrow. And, and I think that's been greatly missed in the equations of how do we help the world to be more adaptive to climate is that we have to help them better define their assets, risk tr protect those so that we can then access cheap lending. So these are five sort of trump cards of why climate innovators should spend at least this co, this podcast and some time after it to work out how risk transfer InsureTech and the insurance market can unlock their own mission.

Tom Raftery:

Fascinating. Fascinating. And how are you helping them, Stephen?

Stephen Brittain:

There's only so much we can, so this is so big I, I, I walk away with a fizzy headache of how big this is. So most humbly, I just found a simple place to start. So we run a venture building studio with a small investment fund, and that is really tailored towards the small team innovator. So that would be a, I mean, typically this is a either somebody who has a real deep domain expertise, so they could be somebody who spent many years trying to help small hold farmers. They might be developing electric battery softwares. So, you know, managing those within electric battery team. And it, it is dawned on them the limitations of chemistry and engineering and they need to think about finance and risk transfer to make this work. And that's, that's generally the type of person that comes to us. So they either come as a, I'm stepping out of my day job to go and see if I can come up with a, an InsureTech product that would accelerate this category. Or they're in postgraduate studies because they thought that was the only way to unblock this is to go and learn some more. And they'll come to us and we will, we will behave like an early stage investor. We will give them a period of time. We call, we make up these terms as we go. But an entrepreneurial resident or a pre-seed investment, you can imagine everyone's a slightly different shape. Sometimes they'll come in with a distribution partner and say, I want to work with this group in, in this particular science. Can we form a, a venture backed business together? And I think that's the key to it, is to use the, the fast tracking power of small teams backed by venture to go forwards. And our commitment to them is that we will help them refine a, a scalable product a, a piece of software that's wrapped up as an insurance, either a risk transfer product or risk modeling product that we can then take to the venture capital market. So our venture capital fund will probably be the lead investor on that to get the ball, the catalyst. Right. And, but I mean, to put it into context, we've been running now for six years. We meet 600 innovators a year. We select about 10 a year, of which six, make it through and through that early study, can we do something together? Can we go fast together, we will invest. We've now invested in 17 businesses from our funds, and they now have a collected value of half a billion. Gw, you know, Sterling, right. And are, are now working with much larger VCs than us. I mean, I'd love to say that we, that you mean we were just a catalytic funding, but we put them on the path to attract venture capital funding. Okay. So we called it a gateway because I hope it's a way for climate innovators to see a way to access new stream of underwriting capital and, and venture, but not equally for the insurance and venture market to see a way of engaging with climate and events.

Tom Raftery:

Nice, nice. And can you give us some examples of companies that you've helped? What kind of spaces are they in? What are they doing?

Stephen Brittain:

I, I'll do it in order because it because I, I'll get confused otherwise, but it also, it probably speaks to the emergence of this, of this overlap between climate innovation and in, if that works for you. So it'll sound less dreamy and it'll get more and more complicated as we go. Okay. And don't stop me along the way, of course, cuz I'm, I'm clearly over caffeinated this morning. So the first, first business we got involved all 20, late 20 16, 20 17. They were called Flood Flash and they identified a very clear problem. And I, I alluded to parts of that story earlier in that they recognized that although many businesses and local communities had flood protection on paper. The reality is that they wouldn't see a settlement for three months and by then 95% of all businesses, local communities gone anyway. There's no, the reality is that doesn't serve the purpose of sustaining and giving resilience to communities. They said, we need to have this fully automated, and they were very clever. Sorry. You know the term IoT, I'm sure that appears in climate innovation as well. They had sensors that they were planting and given, you know, given the environment so it could be outside a small factory anywhere in the world. And it, once that sensor gets wet, it pays out almost instantaneously. So it, it gave and that, so that scenario where two guys who really understood the data behind it and had had worked through the modeling side of it and wanted to launch a direct to market insurance product. And we, we recognize the, superb opportunity to fast track, to productize what looks like a, a load of financial contracts turn into a fiscal product for a world that doesn't need to understand it too much, it's just a thing like, it's a stick I buy, I put it in the ground and and in the event that it floods, I just hear money land in my bank account and I can save my staff, save my business, find a, a place to re reopen and get going. And it made perfect sense to us. Yeah. In the climate centered view on innovation. And so we, we supported them financially and, and put our reputations behind them. Said, this is worth backing. We, we gave them a, a place to work and some contacts to build a prototype and, you know, so, two years later, they were then able to attract the world's biggestest insurer behind them. And because they had been through a phase of proving that there were there that it would you know, although imagine all those things that need to be proved, like when people tamper with it, what if I throw a bucket of water over it, when do I win the lottery? And all those things that go through every investor pitch. Surely this is too good to be true. That all needed to be worked through, and that, you know, we helped them work through that. Gave them the time and space and the team of people that could help answer some of those questions. And our fund invested in them and yeah, so, so that, but interestingly, the first investors were a sort of a group of maverick angel investors, you know, early stage like us, followed by a couple of insurance v generalists, VCs who had an appetite for insurance. And this 2016, 2017, remember climate was still a new thing. They were all talking about cryptocurrency as the new thing then. And then, then came the first impact investors sort of two years ago. You recognize that this could have far greater relevance to advancing climate innovation. So that's a sort of, I mean, it's taken me too long to tell you these stories because it's so also fascinating. Mm-hmm. But it's it's a mastery of recognizing that what the customer needs is speed of recovery. Yeah. And when they didn't wanna have a conversation about was IoT devices, three-dimensional pricing, satellite, that, and nobody wanted to hear about it. They just wanted to know when I get my farm up and running. And I, and I think that's the, that's the smart, the smart place to be in these innovations is to, you know, is to put everything behind that. And more recently I won't go into, how are we doing for time, by the way? Is this too much debt? Too much debt for you? No, you're fine. Okay. More recently we supported a business called Ibisa, i b i s a and they protect small hold farmers and they, and particularly in developing countries, so their pilots been in the Philippines and India, Ghana, and they, they've got some they had a couple of really, I mean, the, the utility layer of what they're doing is very clever. They, they enable us to distribute basic insurance to all farmers, whether you, they do it at the point, when people buy seeds, when they buy tractors, when they're talking, when they're talking about, you know, learning about farming. Somebody's there to help them understand the power of being protected. 75% of the world's food supply chain is unprotected, which is extraordinary when you think about the, the vulnerability to extreme weather events now. I mean, it's, it's, it's a crisis o over the near horizon to not get these groups protected. To be able to bounce back. And they had found cheap and effective ways of making distribution work. And once they got that bit going, then the product stuff started. And the product stuff is where it's really happening. So anticipatory finance is the new term that many of your listeners will be more familiar than my regular conversations with the insurance sector, but the idea that we will put money into a bank accounts before a disaster happens is extraordinary fraud. Before the lightning strikes, before the Hailstone falls, that these farms are able, all these local communities are able to have a response plan ready just doesn't work with insurance model. But they have been piloting that through different kinds of funding sources. So using the insurance risk model, but then using funds from the World Bank or the European Space Agency or different grant groups. Running through risk transfer models. So it's, it's a, you know, it's a bit of science from one group deployed to the funding of another. They now protect 200,000 independent farmers via various distribution channels. And every week I talked to them is another innovation. Last week's meeting was about cows get too hot, what can we do about it? Because it, and I, and I said, well, what's the implication? And they said the milk goes bad. And I said, and I said, how much milk goes bad? And I, and I wish I could remember the numbers cuz this is the time when you need numbers, but it worked out something like 500 times the UK consumption of milk every day in India can spoiled whoa by hot cows. Agrivoltaics could help out there, sure. Yes, exactly. I'm sure your listeners have got have got many other solutions for that. But you know, you, you, so when you know as ever, you know, when an engineer looks a problem or a chemist looks a problem or a, or a risk transfer person looks at a problem, a risk transfer person, you know, might say, well, let's find a way of, surely it makes more sense to put up a shelter in March. Sorry, I'm, I've got a northern hemisphere view on, on weather, you know, in the, in the mild climates, when the, when the weather is mild, let's put out some shelters because we know we've got the UK consumption of milk is gonna be spoiled every day unless we do something about it. If you see where I'm going and that anticipatory finance is a, is a risk transfer model being sort of hotwired to work in the, in the climate innovation space. Right? Yeah. So anyway, I'm very keen on and I'm very keen to meet co-investors for that business because it's, we're in that, that's in that phase I mentioned earlier where it's been through the modeling. It's, it's got some serious results now. Scalable results. It'd be great to sit next to now some in groups that invest more at an infield or in-market scaling cuz they've got something I think that's got been through pilot and it's now. So how do we roll this out in India? And that's quite a different investor. Well, a different culture of money that would sit with us, sit with a group, who've done the product and modeling to then go, right, let's start thinking about rolling this out through our partnerships and people we know. Yeah, there's probably a theme in this in that I will be learning over the months. And, and Tom, any insights from your, you and your, in your audience about how we, how we start to align our different investment cultures? Cuz I think they're very different. Mm. And we've got different values to play. The would you like another example? Yeah, go for it. Okay. I'm it's under your brow of your Panama. I can't see your eyebrows. None. That's a clue of whether I'm talking too much. Peter Earth is one of our more recent groups and they came via an accelerator to us. So we met them through a group called Carbon 13 who attract innovators at a very early stage almost preteen, and they were a group of data scientists who'd been looking at the future of the carbon mar the carbon offset market. Right. And they recognized like many innovators do. In that state, here's a market. It's a bit wild west. And I mean this in the nicest sense, you know, in the same way that we've talked about the cryptocurrency or the digital assets market or the various sectors that are in this rapid emergence. But there's a lot of early adoption in there. But the majority of us are a little bit timid to get involved. Yeah. And they recognize that, for this market to be bonafide, it needed something like a, a warranty or a, an insurance product to wrap it. i e the best carbon credit is an insured carbon credit. Hmm. And, and in doing so, it's not, it wasn't just a blind, let's just insure the thing that all the data and the, and the thinking and the, the understanding about where this market's going and the, and all the problems that, that we could see with it, that we could put a sensible price to protect that, that carbon credit, so that in the event that these carbon credits failed to fail to mature, whatever might happen, the trees don't grow. They get a pest. They were never there in the first place. I mean, I use the example of trees, but whatever it was, or the technology that we were all banking on didn't deliver the alternative energy that we or the sequestration we hoped it would. In the event of that doesn't happen, which in a field like this is pretty long, there's a big long tail to this. There's a long tail to it that the, the, the key to earth would've a better sense of it than anybody else, and that the insurance market would be willing to get behind that and, and give them, give that whole market a chance to accelerate. To accelerate from being a market tailored to early adopters, to one being around institutional investors on the later majority who just needed to see greater protection. So I'm, I'm particularly excited about that as an example because that very swiftly follows people saying, what about biodiversity credits? What about this other category that's emerging? That's almost, you know, that's got all the kind of, internet tissue stage? Can we, you know, by having that risk transfer, thinking that, you know, warranty those kind of structure, having an insurer brave enough to come in on something with a very long tail of, you know, big, long risk curve to it. If we can get somebody behind it, we can make this, we could start to really think that meeting a goal in 10 years is possible because without it, we'll all be saying, wasn't that a great idea? It's a shame we couldn't get somebody behind it.

Tom Raftery:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm curious, Stephen, you said you're meeting 600 companies a year, of which you select 10, of which six get through, if I remember the numbers correctly. What are your like selection criteria to get from 600 to 10, and then what, what happens the other four from that 10 to narrow it

Stephen Brittain:

down to six? I can give you a really standard early VC answer, so I'll give you the mechanics of it. But the, the final, the, you know, the early stages, a conviction investor, there's never enough proof. You just have to like, you just have to like it. So that generally means that you have to really like the people where they come from, who they are. And so is there a purpose and is their background aligned? So I, I generally, you know, if the person's right or the, the small group of people are, are right, they have some domain expertise and they're pretty committed to solving a problem, then I I'm pretty sold. Not, I say I, I'm, I'm one of, I'm, I'm maybe more of the person decision maker because the people I work with are far more technical than me. You know, I've got insurance partners and I've got investor partners in my team, and they might have a slightly use a slightly different part of their brain. But the general first point is, do we, would we, do we wanna spend 10 years with these people to help them on their mission because it's a 10 year commitment, something like this, right. You know, so, so it's so important to get the people piece right. And we have you know, the, and, and I have to say, I look across a portfolio and all of them are up 26 founding teams are extraordinary individuals. And without a hesitation, I would sit on a five hour train ride and I would get off that train feeling smarter inspired than before I got on it. So I, that's the bar. You know, they're just really passionate and gonna do it. And then of course you get into the product and market. The second two points, and I, I don't mean to be dismissive, but it's so hard to get that first one right? Mm-hmm. But can we, can we come up with a product together? That key to earth story of the Carbon Credit meets warranty was a sort of a chemistry moment, be between us all in a room and said, we think we can make that product launch and we think we know how to get you into market. So there was a sort of product magic that happened there, and the market thing is generally just, is it big enough and is it now? The market you know, it's a timing and size thing where, and you know, generally you can look to an and an analytical consulting team to give you an answer or read a report and find a statistic that says, generally everything's got seven zeros behind it being a billion or a trillion. So generally the market sizing is never a problem. It's just is it now. And the wonderful thing about climate innovation is. kind of, everything's now, isn't it?

Tom Raftery:

It's yesterday or last year, or the year before, A decade ago.

Stephen Brittain:

Yeah. So I, yeah. Yeah. So I have, I have sort of less, less, I'm a problem with the market bit. I mean, many innovators have misunderstood what the market is asking for. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And I think that's one of the challenges. I was at a a seminar, seminar last night. I met a number of founders and it was, there were an awful lot of assumptions of where the market decision making was relative to where to start. Proper market need. Proper market need. You know, there is a, there is enormous void between what the carbon credit market can promise and what it can deliver today. And it's big enough to do, to launch a massive venture backed startup today. There is a flood re response problem and has been since the dawn of civilization. Sure. And only now could we crack it. I could, I could make a clear argument about timing and market size for both of those examples. And, and I guess the fourth person in the fourth thing is I, I mentioned the 10 year thing. I've just, we just gotta really like it. And the, the joy of, of talking around, you know, build, putting confidence into climate businesses is pretty hard not to like this stuff. Yep. I mean, it's, it's generally really fascinating in it, it makes you realize why you spend so much time learning your trade is because you can really help solve real problems. So I have less of a problem. I've, I've never had such a, a, an easier fourth decision. Do I really like this? It's been trying to convince myself not to do everything. So the problem I'm, we are gonna have is the more climate innovators that come through the front door if we can find a product. And I think we're learning, I'm hoping some of these examples will be informative to help either identify with people or get them thinking that I hope we get, we just have too much to do quite soon. And that would be a lovely problem. But there aren't enough coming through that funnel just yet.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. Okay. Well hopefully we'll fix that. Where do you see yourselves in five to 10 years? What's the, the longer term plan?

Stephen Brittain:

I I'm obsessed with progress. And so I would it would, I'd have to be looking back on this period of time and saying, we actually made this stuff, get, we got the stuff into market. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm standing and, and there are 30 or 40 high impact businesses that have, I don't like to use the term unicorn because I think it's too gross. Money market's focused, but it's, you know, it's I'm standing in front of a portfolio, you know, with my team. Maybe

Tom Raftery:

we redefine unicorn. Maybe we re re we redefine unicorn in this space as being a gigaton.

Stephen Brittain:

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So it's a, it's got a, we've got a series of gigaton businesses that have, and because I always see the challenge of getting there In order to have become that probably unlocked, you know, 10, 20 billion of underwriting capital have unlocked 10 billion of venture capital. And I see that line ahead of me today. I see that, you know, we have unlocked half a billion of underwriting capital and half a billion of investment capital and we're doing the right thing. I just need to make sure that quality stays in everything we do because I think we're in a, an area of such growth and such need that we just don't mess it up, just keep attentive to good founders with, you know, and, and keep their journey, derisk their journey. So, where do I see myself? I, I I, I guess I'm, I hope that this new frontier of risk meets climate is more established. I and I spend less time being an activist and an educator. I mean, in the lightest, I realize how light this stuff is the way I'm willing to share with you, but that I think a more established relationship is here in place and more of a platform is in place, and that I can spend time with people who, with great ideas you know, and cuz some of the harder things, th this stuff is hard enough. Yeah. Just getting through the mechanics of this, you know, I, and, and I really like I said before, I'm, I'm, I'm most passionate about founders. So in five years time, I'd feel that it's gonna be such a need to coach and give confidence to people. I mean, hence when we spoke last week, climate confidence. No, we need, we need to give confidence to climate innovators. This is a, that was a very long answer to your question. I wish I'd rehearsed it more. I, I've, in five years time, I've given confidence to climate innovators. Nice. Nice. And that's our measure.

Tom Raftery:

Fantastic. Left field question. Steven, how did you get into this space?

Stephen Brittain:

So I was a product designer and obviously no mechanical engineer, product designer, right. And I and had, had lots of big ideas. You know, the kind of moonshot idea was never a problem. It was always trying to work out how to get it to market. So I guess through frustration I worked with, and I, and I was lucky to work with some and some very big innovation projects. And I think it was a realization that as much as I could design out the stupid of many products, the ergonomics, the, the safety instructions, the, the things that made people understand this new paradigm, this new mobile phone was how to use it and how it all works and all the things that product designers usually worry about. It was when I, I, I kept banging into risk, risk transfer, the bigger my ideas got and I thought, what if I'm really gonna be an innovator that I'm, I'm not gonna you know, meet my own potential, I'm gonna have to get my head around this. So the breakthrough for me was I, I, I spent a year talking to people who said, how do I unlock this problem? I can't get big ideas to happen. I can't get people to back my ideas. And they said, have you thought about talking to people in the insurance market? Because they de-risk ideas. It was a, it was a friend that said, meet this guy. So, I met this chap called Robert Lumley, who's my co-founderof Gateway. Or I'm his co-founder. I, I shouldn't be so possessive, should I? We co-founded the Gateway in a, in a kind of moment of chemistry of you know, I'm a frustrated innovator that is, had big ideas and can't make them happen. And he, you know, told a story of, you know, sort of removing the barriers of regulated markets and accessing capital, the hot knife through butter. This started as a, as a conversation. We went for a all around the park and sort of three laps at the park later, we decided to set up a business together. We thought there's something in this. Excellent. And that was a, you know, the, this, yeah. It was a breakthrough moment for me of being the, you know, the sort of slightly rest, I mean, I'm still restless, but the restless innovator, product designer meets somebody who can help unlock this, the route to scale. And I've, and we've sought to put our heads together ever since. I've had as one benefits of one not scare the other.

Tom Raftery:

Yep. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Stephen, is there any question that I haven't asked that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important to make people aware of?

Stephen Brittain:

And nothing too specific. I mean, I'm, I'm conscious as we've spoken that I've, I've referenced a number of ideas in more mitigation space, sort of, you know, catastrophic weather events. And and I've mentioned new spaces like Keter and the Carbon Credits Protection. I'm hoping that I give the impression to your listeners of our openness to look at the most advanced fields in net zero goals, climate goals, sequestrian projects. I want to To, to tell your audience that we are open and listening and we're, and we are, we are meeting founders from electric vehicles through to problems with crop harvest in Namibia and that they all belong in that, you know, where we want to go. And and I, but I think there's, and there's another conversation I'm hoping to have. Which is around the, we might be willing to back our, in that product development piece where our expertise lies, but I really feel the value of us aligning with a climate investor, somebody who can see what, can see that in rather like the way I described the relationship where I met Robert in that kind of one unlocks the other. I think that a climate investor sitting alongside us would be an incredible partnership. And I haven't really, I haven't quite found a way to make it work. We're all learning together. So if your audience sort of might, might have people who are already looking this way, I'd be delighted if somebody could, you know, bring that to us. I'm, I'm so open to try and find a way of making the product piece work with the pilot and implementation piece. So that's a, that's a call for help. Lovely, lovely, sir. Any other way?

Tom Raftery:

If, if people do want to get in touch, Stephen, if people wanna know more about yourself or any of the, any of the things we talked about in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Stephen Brittain:

I think probably the, the easiest way is in the show notes will include our website address, insuretechgateway.com. You can follow us on LinkedIn and we keep that updated with all the latest projects and applications for new cohorts. In fact, we've got one we're, we're closing a deadline on July the fifth for the next cohort of climate innovators. So if you are, if you're close and you want to get moving or at least you wanna, this is a chart to get talking, then, you know, go to our website, go via our LinkedIn or look at the show notes and and let's talk

Tom Raftery:

Super Great, Stephen, that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Stephen Brittain:

Thank you very much, Tom. Really enjoyed it.

Tom Raftery:

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to Tom raftery@outlook.com. Or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please, don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks, catch you all next time.

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