Dr Entela Benz, CEO of Intensel
The work of Intensel is strongly related to the fact that climate change and financial risk are increasingly intertwined. As global warming continues to escalate, so is the risk of disasters such as floods and typhoons, leading to significant losses yearly. In fact, in 2021, Swiss Re predicted up to 18 per cent losses in GDP due to climate risks globally by 2050 if no mitigation actions are taken.
This means there is an urgency for real estate owners and other stakeholders to understand and mitigate their exposure. Unfortunately, as pointed out by Dr Entela Benz, CEO of Intensel, adequate data analytics to quantify these risks at the asset level are still lacking. Apart from that, climate risk disclosures have also become mandatory under International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) standards in many regions.
This is where Intensel comes in with its solutions.
“At Intensel, we aim to demystify the financial impacts of climate change. Leveraging AI, big data, and our team’s combined expertise in climate science and finance, we’ve created a unique analytics platform,” explains Dr Benz in an email interview with e27.
“This tool employs in-depth climate science modelling paired with financial risk modelling to quickly pinpoint asset-level exposure and vulnerability across 10 climate hazards, including rainfall floods, storm surges, typhoons, and sea level rise. It also calculates the dollar-value-at-risk under three different time horizons and six climate scenarios worldwide.”
The subscription-based software platform allows stakeholders in various sectors, including banking, real estate, insurance, and asset management, to comprehend their climate-related financial risks and opportunities, with the end goal to empower them in optimising their portfolios, becoming more climate-resilient and compliant with increasing regulatory standards such as those from the ISSB.
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“Our firm belief is that understanding risk, recognising opportunity, and acting decisively can help shape a more sustainable, climate-resilient future,” Dr Benz stresses.
The Intensel platform is the result of over three years of research and development. According to Dr Benz, it involved managing and interpreting terabytes of modelling data powered by AI and cloud computing.
“In Q1 2022, we successfully launched our digital climate platform on a subscription basis, offering global coverage across ten climate hazards, featuring the latest Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). To better cater to the needs of asset managers and other high-volume data users, we’ve developed APIs. We also offer real estate flood scores as a standalone product, further broadening our portfolio of services,” she says.
“We’re continuously working to enhance the capabilities of our platform. Some of the latest additions include loss estimations adjusted for asset-level flood mitigations and GDP adjusted for the climate change impact on the economy. Future plans include the introduction of country and district-level hazard maps and index benchmarking.”
In 2022, Intensel received a grant from the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) Proof-of-Concept (POC) Scheme which allowed it to partner with the Dutch multinational bank ING Group. It has also been selected for various accelerator and impact programmes in the Asia Pacific.
Impacting climate works in the region
As with any climate tech startup, Intensel pays attention to the impact that it is making on its clients.
“So far, we’ve facilitated the analysis of over 2,000 assets, identifying more than US$30 billion in potential losses attributable to climate change. We believe our platform can help companies quantify how they can avoid climate-related losses and reduce the financial risk of climate change globally,” Dr Benz says.
“At Intensel, we acknowledge that even with significant emission reductions and a limit to global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, climate change impacts are inevitable. Hence, urgent adaptation measures are needed. We advocate for asset-level climate risk assessments by fund managers and asset owners. Our core objective is to minimise global financial risks from climate change by utilising our platform, which quantifies potential climate-related losses, enabling clients to take necessary mitigation steps.”
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Intensel has teams based in Hong Kong, Singapore, and India, with its leadership team consisting of Dr Benz, COO Ashley Hegland, and CFO Ben Shum.
“In our early stages, we were fortunate to have garnered financial backing through a seed funding round, supported by notable investors and advisors such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Additionally, we benefited from participating in the Hong Kong Science Park and Technology Corporation’s incubation programme, which was instrumental in our development and growth,” Dr Benz says.
“Our selection by the two accelerator and impact programmes is a recognition of the strength and potential of our solution to meet the increasing market demand to comprehend climate-related financial risks through high-quality climate data and robust analytics.”
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Image Credit: Intensel
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