WRMA - Weather Risk Management Association
Three milestone transactions took place in 1997, marking the beginning of the current weather risk market. For a brief history of the market, click here.
The Weather Risk Management Association (WRMA) was founded in 1999 by leading participants in the weather market
as the industry association for the weather risk management business. Its purpose is to foster public consciousness of
weather risk and its management as well as to promote the growth and general welfare of the weather risk market.
WRMA is managed by the Kellen Company, an employee-owned association management company providing association and meetings management, public relations, government affairs, marketing, web site development and graphic design services. Offices in Atlanta, New York, Washington,D.C., Tucson, Brussels and Beijing.
The Association has made major contributions to the development of the market by taking the initiative in the following areas:
- Improving access to weather data - working with the support of NOAA and the NWS, reduction of government obstacles to access to data in many countries, improvement of data reporting and quality standards.
- Standardizing documentation of weather transactions - development of ISDA confirmation templates for the most common weather transactions, standardization of fallback protocols.
- Establishing credit standards - establishment of template margining procedures.
- Expanding the weather market geographically - creation of WRMA organizations in Japan and Europe, cooperation with government efforts to introduce weather risk management into national regulatory frameworks, education of markets through conference activity.
- Broadening the market's commercial scope - outreach to other, related sectors, including banking/finance, agriculture, energy and trading. Watching over regulatory issues critical to the market - monitoring of regulatory activity, particularly in the EU,
- Japan and the US (e.g. weather normalization, encroachment of insurance regulation on financial transactions), and voicing the weather market's generals concerns in the regulatory arena.