It pays on the rainfall, not on the damage.
Parametric cover settles against an index — millimetres of rain at a named station over a named window — rather than against an assessment of what you actually lost. It pays in days rather than months, and it has one honest weakness that no amount of marketing removes.
None of this is available
Nothing on this page is an offer, an invitation to invest, or a financial promotion. Community shares, bonds and insurance are regulated products: capital would be at risk, they are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, and none of them is available anywhere in this build. Any real version would require an authorised firm, approved promotions under section 21 of FSMA 2000, and documentation nobody generates from a website.
How it would actually work.
You choose a trigger: fewer than thirty millimetres of rain at the Little Rissington station across the whole of June, say. You pay a premium. If the station records under thirty millimetres, it pays out a fixed sum, automatically, without anybody visiting your farm.
That is the entire mechanism. No loss adjuster, no claim form, no argument about whether the damage was caused by the drought or by drilling too late. The index either triggers or it does not, and the data is public.
For smallholders and small growers this is genuinely useful, because conventional crop insurance at that scale costs more to administer than it pays out.
A worked example, on this farm.
| Parameter | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Index | Total rainfall, 1 to 30 June | A single, checkable number |
| Station | The nearest Met Office station, named in the policy | Not the farm’s own gauge, which nobody else can audit |
| Trigger | Under 30mm | June 2025 recorded 21mm here |
| Payout | A fixed sum per hectare covered | Same payout whether you lost a little or everything |
| Premium | Priced off thirty years of station data | Which is why this needs an insurer, not a spreadsheet |
| Settlement time | Days after the window closes | Against months for a conventional claim |
| Basis risk | The problem below | Read that row twice |
Basis risk, which is the honest weakness.
Basis risk is the gap between the index and your actual loss. The station is eleven miles away. It records thirty-one millimetres. You had eight, your crop is ruined, and the policy pays nothing.
Or the reverse: the station records twenty-nine, you had perfectly adequate rain, your crop is fine and you get paid anyway. That one feels like a windfall until you realise you paid for it in the premium.
Every parametric product has this and no product design removes it. It can be reduced with a denser network, a satellite-derived index, or a blend of stations — all of which cost money and none of which eliminate it. A product that does not put basis risk in front of the buyer is mis-selling by omission.
What an honest parametric product looks like.
Required
- A single, public, checkable index
- Automatic settlement, in days
- No loss adjuster and no claim form
- Basis risk stated plainly, before purchase
- A licensed insurer carrying the risk
Disqualifying
- Any suggestion that it tracks your actual loss
- Any index only the operator can see
- Any product sold by a farm shop or by this website
- Any arrangement where the brand carries the risk
- Any policy sold without an authorised firm behind it
Why it is on this site at all.
Because it is one of the better ideas in agricultural technology, it is genuinely useful to people who cannot get conventional cover, and it is routinely marketed by people who do not mention basis risk until the claim is declined.
And because the honest version of a brand-fronted insurance product — an authorised insurer, a properly appointed distributor, and a disclosure that leads with the weakness — is worth describing even if this build will never sell one.
Why none of this can be sold here.
The regulated perimeter, and what sits inside it.
