Against a background of decreasing purchase power and increasing prices, Poweo, an independent gas and electricity operator, together with Aon, risk management consultants and a world leader in insurance and reinsurance brokerage, and Metnext, a subsidiary of Météo France specialising in climatic risk management, are introducing a unique offering enabling individuals to protect themselves against additional energy costs linked to unusually cold winters.
Concretely, Poweo undertakes to credit its clients with 1 euro for each degree measured under the Cold Weather threshold for the region and for each day concerned. This guarantee, designed by Aon, is completely automatic. It is based on Météo France data recorded locally by Metnext, and guarantee calculations conducted by Aon, who then sends the reimbursement automatically on the anniversary date of the contract signing.
With the insurance option for an amount of 4 euros per month, the client also receives an email alert when the Cold Weather threshold is reached in its region and has free access to the Poweo client page on the Internet for day-by-day viewing of the reimbursement balance to be received.
Compensate for extra heating requirements
In his press release, Charles Beigbedder, CEO of Poweo explains that "with the launching of this offer, Poweo is pursuing its streamlining and empowerment strategy for individuals with respect to energy consumption. With this daily compensation of 1 euro per degree under the Cold Weather threshold the Poweo client can compensate for the extra heating required to maintain an ambient household temperature, without being encouraged to raise the usual temperature or abandoning a responsible attitude towards energy consumption."
In the same way, "Aon is pleased that its innovative project for climatic coverage for the general public is to see the light of day. By combining Aon's insurance expertise with our knowledge of risk management, we can offer clients automatic management without paper or declarations. For the client, this is win-win: if the winter is harsh, the insurance decreases the invoice amount; if the winter is mild, the invoice is decreased naturally", points out Julien Renaud, Associate Director of Global Risk Consulting.
An incident triggered by climatic hazards
In this way, the consumer has no declaration to fill in. The incident is triggered by a climatic hazard. This procedure is based on the reliability of meteorological indices calculated by Metnext who draws them up on a daily basis according to its databases and notes the data recorded by the most representative weather station of the region where the client resides. As soon as the average temperature over 24h is less than the threshold defined for the region, coverage is triggered.
"For this type of guarantee, Metnext implements its double skill set combining meteorological risk and index creation with which it structures climatic protection. Independent of insurers such as brokers, Metnext also acts as a trusted third party in the transaction, providing complete transparency for the end client via daily climatic information per zone,'' explains Marie-Geneviève Renaudin, General Director of Metnext.
