Why We Invested in Suyana: Building Climate Resilience Through Parametric Innovation
At Halcyon Venture Partners, we invest in entrepreneurs building bold solutions to systemic problems—especially when they combine deep technical rigor with mission-driven intent.
Rodrigo Garcia Ayala
Co-founder and CEO of Suyana
Every year, billions in weather-driven losses go uninsured, leaving families, small businesses, and entire economies exposed to the rising costs of extreme weather.
That protection gap — the growing divide between insured and uninsured losses — is not just a market failure. It’s a humanitarian one. And it is precisely this gap that Suyana, a parametric insurtech company founded in Boston by Rodrigo Garcia and Fernando Yu, aims to close.
From accelerating payouts to reducing basis risk to embedding coverage directly into everyday financial tools, Suyana is not just modernizing insurance—it’s rebuilding resilience where it’s needed most.
The Problem: A Protection Gap That’s Leaving Millions Behind
In 2024, climate-related losses reached $368 billion (AON, 2025). Less than 40% were insured. The rest—nearly $220 billion—represented unrecoverable damage to homes, crops, supply chains, and livelihoods.
Traditional insurance models are too slow, expensive, and exclusionary to meet this moment—especially in low-income, climate-vulnerable regions. Manual claims processes, outdated risk models, and high distribution costs have left entire communities without coverage.
Parametric insurance, which pays automatically when pre-defined climate thresholds are crossed, offers speed and simplicity—but has historically struggled with basis risk (payouts don’t always match real-world loss), especially in data-scarce environments.
Suyana’s Solution: Precision at Scale
Suyana’s platform uses satellite imagery, IoT sensor data, and proprietary machine learning to power a hybrid-parametric model that:
Triggers instant payouts days after climate events based on specific, observable parameters (like rainfall, temperature, or wind speed) being met or exceeded, with hybrid triggers to reduce basis risk without adding friction
Achieves 400× greater precision than public baselines
Embeds coverage into existing financial products (like ag loans or government programs)
This approach reduces friction for customers and lowers acquisition costs by integrating insurance directly into how farmers, small businesses, and households already manage risk, which enables financial institutions to expand coverage in high-need markets.
Why Latin America — and Why Now
Latin America is both one of the most underinsured regions in the world and one of the most structurally suited for embedded distribution. Many financial institutions in the region house both credit and insurance arms—making B2B2C scale possible.
For example, in countries where bancassurance (where financial institutions have both credit and insurance arms) accounts for up to 80% of premiums, a single institutional partner can bring climate protection to thousands.
The timing is right: the global parametric insurance market is projected to double to $40B by 2030[DG2] —and Suyana is positioning itself as a category leader from the Global South outward.
Founder-Market Fit, Rooted in Purpose
Co-founders Rodrigo Garcia and Fernando Yu are Harvard-trained economists from Latin America with a deep understanding of the communities most affected by climate volatility. They’ve combined their personal mission with rigorous data science to build a risk engine that integrates:
High-fidelity satellite and sensor datasets
Wave and flood models at 500-meter coastal resolution
Proprietary hybrid-trigger algorithms
This technical depth enables Suyana to reduce basis risk while extending protection into regions long considered uninsurable.
Early Traction
Suyana has already secured $5M in reinsurance capacity and launched pilot programs across the region:
Bolivia: Drought protection with Banco Bisa, Banco Económico, and ag wholesalers; projected to generate $2M in premiums in 2025
Peru: Storm-surge coverage for artisanal fishing networks, in collaboration with the government and insurers
Mexico: Hail protection for auto dealerships across 20 networks; targeting $4M in gross written premiums
Colombia: Rice-farmer coverage in partnership with Banco Davivienda
This traction reflects alignment across lenders (who want loan repayment stability) and borrowers (who want fast, fair protection).[DG3]
A Distinctive Data Advantage
Suyana’s proprietary platform combines multi-sensor geospatial data and advanced transfer learning to generate hyper-local climate risk models, even in data-scarce regions. Their data platform enables high-resolution hazard, exposure, and loss estimates down with 400x greater precision than alternatives, with a long-term roadmap that includes a subscription-based Climate Exposure Database for banks, reinsurers, and developers.
Why We Invested
Suyana reflects three core investment criteria:
Mission-driven technology that combines global-caliber machine learning with on-the-ground empathy
Embedded scalability through bank and government partners that drive adoption at low marginal cost
Measurable impact—with a roadmap to protect 1 billion people within the decade
In a world where insurance often fails those who need it most, Suyana offers not just a new product—but a new standard for how climate protection should work.
Looking Ahead
Over the next 18 months, Suyana will launch its first full commercial products across Latin America. Beyond that, the team envisions expanding into Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa—bringing data-driven climate resilience to the global majority.
For HVP, this is exactly the kind of investment that blends market opportunity with structural impact. We’re excited to support Rodrigo, Fernando, and the Suyana team as they bring scalable, inclusive protection to the people and places that need it most.
