Traditional risk models built on decades-old data are failing to keep up with today’s rapidly shifting climate landscape, believes Amy Antczak (pictured), co-founder and chief operating officer of reinsurer GreenieRE. The industry’s backward-facing approach to risk modeling has left major gaps, especially in the underwriting of commercial lines where climate-related exposures are becoming harder to quantify.
“A lot of that is just not correct anymore,” said Antczak, referencing legacy weather models. “We’re having 100-year storms every 10 years now, and perhaps even more frequently.”
The challenge, she said, is that climate technology doesn’t come with 100 years of actuarial history - and that lack of data is skewing how risk is perceived and priced. GreenieRE was founded to shift this model and push insurers toward more predictive, technology-driven underwriting.
“We really need to have more forward-looking risk modeling,” Antczak said. “We are hoping that with technology, we can really enhance the data that we have access to, and that can help us with the underwriting.”
Antczak pointed to machine learning and large language models as tools that could help bridge the climate data gap in the next three to five years. For reinsurers like GreenieRE, the hope is that more advanced modeling can correct current market misperceptions around emerging climate technologies.
“We are hoping to be able to take that new technology, the new modeling, and demonstrate that some of these climate risks are really not as risky as some insurers might think that they are,” she said.
Without sufficient data, insurers often err on the side of caution, leaving potentially insurable climate tech outside their risk appetite. GreenieRE’s approach aims to build confidence through quota share agreements - absorbing initial exposures alongside carriers, then gradually transferring more of the risk to partners as their comfort level grows.
“If we do a deal where we partner with a large insurance carrier, they can take on a certain amount of risk and we’ll do a quota share. Then maybe the next risk going forward, or the next deal, they’ll take on a larger portion,” Antczak said.
But technical advancement alone isn’t enough. Cultural and structural barriers continue to block meaningful progress across the insurance value chain. For Antczak, a key issue is the siloed nature of the industry and the lack of meaningful data sharing between market participants.
“We found that in the insurance industry, things are quite siloed,” she said. “You have MGAs that have very specialized, niche expertise. You have large carriers. Maybe that MGA works with one particular carrier, but if there’s not a lot of collaboration, then the specific niche risk is only going to be understood by one company.”
This lack of openness restricts innovation and leaves many niche or emerging risks underserved. Without broader collaboration, Antczak warned, the industry will struggle to adapt at the speed required.
