When Bunmi Ogunwusi set out to bring insurance to Nigerian farmers in 2018, she was working with a market that traditional actuarial models had written off entirely. Six states. Zero viable insurance products. The math simply didn’t work using conventional risk assessment.
What she built instead was an AI-enhanced agricultural risk assessment framework that flipped the economics. Within two years, seven insurance companies had adopted her model, and 930 farmers who previously had no access to coverage were insured. The Nigerian Insurers Association named it a “Best Practice Model.”
Now, Ogunwusi is bringing that same approach to American homeowners facing climate disasters.
From Uninsurable Markets to Fortune 100
The framework that worked in Nigeria wasn’t just theoretical innovation. It had to function in an environment where traditional loss adjusters couldn’t easily reach claimants, where weather data was sparse, and where trust in insurance institutions was low. Ogunwusi’s solution combined parametric triggers—automated payouts based on objective measurements like rainfall or temperature—with AI models that could assess risk using alternative data sources.
“The challenge wasn’t the technology itself,” Ogunwusi explains. “It was building something insurers would actually adopt and that farmers would actually trust.”
That practical bent caught the attention of Allstate, where she now leads climate risk initiatives. The connection isn’t obvious until you consider what’s happening with flood and wildfire insurance in the United States. Entire markets are becoming uninsurable. Carriers are pulling out of Florida, California, Louisiana. The parallels to those six Nigerian states are uncomfortable.
When Disaster Strikes, Speed Matters
Ogunwusi’s upcoming book, “When Every Second Counts,” due in 2026, examines why disaster recovery insurance currently pays out in months rather than days. Her parametric insurance systems are designed to solve exactly that problem. When a hurricane hits or a wildfire burns through a community, victims need resources immediately—not after lengthy claims investigations.
Her work has gained recognition beyond the insurance industry. She serves as a peer reviewer for the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction and Safety Science, published by Elsevier, and holds the title of IEEE Senior Member—a distinction that requires demonstrated expertise and professional accomplishment.
The question she’s focused on now: Can the innovations that worked in emerging markets actually improve how America handles climate insurance? For 930 Nigerian farmers, her framework was the difference between having protection and having none. For American homeowners watching insurers exit their states, those climate risk modeling innovations might soon matter just as much.
