Sensible Weather, a climate risk technology company, has revealed its $12-million Series A funding round, bringing its total financing to more than $20 million. The round was led by San Francisco-based Infinity Ventures with participation from Certares Ventures, existing investors Wonder Ventures and Group1001, as well as executives from hospitality and fintech pioneers Airbnb, Pacaso, Plaid and Toast.
The new capital will allow Sensible to grow its deep pool of top engineering and scientific talent, accelerate development of its proprietary climate data and risk analytics platform, and expand its Weather Guarantee offering into international markets, the company reports.
“Embedded finance is a large and growing market, and Sensible has shown rapid traction in the space by combining proprietary climate analytics and fintech to create new value for consumers,” said Jay Gantara, partner, Infinity Capital. “In the same way extended warranties give consumers protection on goods they’ve purchased, Sensible’s novel Weather Guarantee service covers experiential purchases like travel reservations and event tickets with a new form of warranty protection.”
Since its launch early this year, Sensible has sold thousands of Weather Guarantees via its growing roster of hospitality and outdoor recreation partners. Consumers purchase Weather Guarantee protection when booking travel reservations and ticketed attractions online and if a weather event, such as rain, is forecasted to occur during the covered experience, Sensible automatically sends a reimbursement. Guarantee payments are processed immediately, based on the number of hours the experience is negatively impacted by weather.
“With Weather Guarantee attach rates approaching 50% in early partner channels, we’re converting at about 5x higher than traditional travel insurance,” said Nick Cavanaugh, founder/CEO, Sensible Weather. “We’re doubling down on our investments in this new embedded fintech service to accelerate our goals of driving ancillary revenue for partners and enhancing the in-destination experience for travelers. With climate increasingly impacting vacations and outdoor experiences, Sensible’s Weather Guarantees offers consumers peace of mind when booking reservations online by giving them the option to recoup their experiential losses when bad weather interferes with plans.”
As a platform business, Sensible’s Weather Guarantee is the first of several products being developed on its climate engine, a high-performance data, analytics and risk assessment platform, to address the larger climate insurance market. Each of Sensible’s constituent components are built to exacting SaaS standards and are meant to be use-case agnostic, enabling the company to cater to both consumers and business across a wide range of industries impacted by climate, the company reports.
