Swiss impact investor BlueOrchard has reached a $100 million final close for its second InsuResilience private equity fund, or IIF PE II. That follows a $50 million initial close in mid-2023. UK asset manager Schroders Group, which owns a majority stake in BlueOrchard, and an unnamed European reinsurer with broad climate mandates, were among the fund’s private investors. They joined development finance institutions including Germany’s KfW, the Nordic Development Fund and British International Investment.
Many investors are still getting comfortable with climate insurance as an asset class. “Forty percent of investors in the fund are private investors who are benefitting from first-loss provisions,” BlueOrchard’s Martin Diaz Plata told ImpactAlpha.
Insuring climate risk
More than half of the second InsuResilience fund has been deployed into seven companies, including South Africa’s Naked which embeds climate coverage into existing insurance policies, and Brazilian parametric insurance provider Newe.
The fund has expanded its strategy from working solely with local insurance companies to backing financial intermediaries that on-lend to small businesses, insurance tech startups and enabling technologies such as climate data analytics companies that offer risk assessments.
“We thought that climate insurance was something that local insurance would sell,” said Plata. “Now we’re taking a more holistic, value chain approach of how climate insurance is sold to our targeted populations in emerging economies.”
