Layer 1 Agriculture (GIA 2025)
Layer 1 Agriculture Founder, Roberta Leão
Layer 1 Agriculture:
On a mission to make specialty crops insurable by addressing the structural risk-modeling gap.
Answers provided by Roberta Leão (GIA 2025)
About the Founder:
My background is in building and scaling technology-driven businesses in capital-intensive sectors, particularly across agriculture, climate, and industrial systems. Over time, my work converged on risk, how it is measured, priced, and transferred, and how weak risk frameworks distort access to capital and markets.
About the L1A team:
The team brings experience across agriculture, climate data systems, insurance product development, and software engineering. Layer 1 Agriculture was co-founded with Mike Locatis, with core team members Dawn Stoppelmoor, Brian Worthington, Christopher Whitfield, and Andrii Bardachenko. The operating team is supported by senior advisors with deep backgrounds in underwriting, reinsurance, and regulated insurance operations. As we build toward full specialty-crop insurance operations, we are selectively expanding the team with insurance and specialty-lines expertise.
What was the motivation to start L1A?
The company grew out of earlier work in agriculture, including novel crop systems, energy crops, and non-traditional projects that consistently failed to secure financing and insurance. The constraint was rarely agronomic or commercial. It was underwriting. Projects sat outside standard models, leaving risk unmeasurable and therefore uninsurable. That experience made clear that insurance is the operational expression of risk quantification. Layer 1 Agriculture was formed in 2024 to address that structural gap. Participation in the GIA 2025 program was focused on grounding our risk-modeling framework in real insurance products and underwriting use cases.
About Layer 1 Agriculture:
What’s the mission and problem being solved?
Layer 1 Agriculture’s mission is to make specialty crops insurable by addressing the structural risk-modeling gap that excludes high-value fruits, vegetables, nuts, orchards, and vines from effective insurance coverage. These crops lack the dense yield and claims histories required by traditional actuarial systems, and their heterogeneity makes regional averaging ineffective. The result is a persistent insurance protection gap.
We address this with L1A Risk, a proprietary vertical-AI risk engine that models farm-level exposure using climate, crop, soil, and management data rather than historical yield alone. L1A Risk produces actuarial-grade risk scores and embeds them directly into insurance design, pricing, underwriting, and parametric payouts, enabling specialty-crop insurance to function where legacy frameworks do not.
How is L1A solving this problem?
We solve this problem by replacing yield-centric actuarial approaches with a modeled-exposure underwriting framework designed for specialty crops. Insurability is determined at the farm level using risk signals rather than historical production averages.
L1A Risk integrates climate patterns, crop traits, soil conditions, and management practices to generate standardized risk scores that we use directly to price coverage, set limits, and allocate capacity. Those scores are operationalized through a digital insurance workflow, allowing specialty-crop coverage to scale in data-sparse environments.
Who is L1A solving the problem for? Who are the customers and why are they interested in this solution?
We serve specialty-crop growers, including producers of fruits, vegetables, nuts, orchards, and vines, who operate with limited or ineffective insurance because traditional products do not reflect their actual exposure. Our parametric products appeal to these growers because triggers are transparent, payouts are predictable, and basis risk is explicitly managed at the farm level.
We also work with the balance-sheet capacity that supports our underwriting. Our modeled-exposure approach allows us to structure and manage parametric coverage with tighter control of risk, supporting responsible expansion in heterogeneous agricultural systems.
How does L1A intersect with the insurance industry?
Layer 1 Agriculture operates as a tech-native specialty-crop insurer. We design, price, and manage parametric insurance products using our proprietary risk-modeling framework. While we partner for balance-sheet capacity, we retain control over risk modeling, underwriting logic, product structure, and portfolio management.
What gives L1A a competitive advantage within the industry? How does L1A differentiate from competitors and what makes L1A unique?
Our advantage is structural. We are built as an insurer around a proprietary risk-modeling framework, not as a software layer attached to legacy systems. L1A Risk is purpose-built for specialty-crop exposure and does not depend on dense yield or claims histories.
We embed that risk intelligence directly into underwriting and parametric trigger design, enabling active management of basis risk at the farm level. Combined with an integrated digital workflow, this creates a closed learning loop where policy and loss outcomes continuously improve underwriting performance. That structure allows expansion across crops, perils, and regions without rebuilding the core framework.
What exciting things are happening for L1A?
Layer 1 Agriculture recently completed the InsurTechNY MGA Lab, expanding our capabilities across product design, regulatory structure, and go-to-market execution. The program strengthened our relationships with distribution partners, capacity providers, and experienced insurance operators.
We are now engaged in capacity discussions to support the launch of our first parametric specialty-crop insurance product. These efforts are focused on securing the balance-sheet support required to move from platform development to live underwriting in the 2026–2027 timeframe.
How has L1A grown and changed since the GIA?
Since the GIA program, Layer 1 Agriculture has evolved from a risk-intelligence engine into an integrated, tech-native insurance platform. Risk modeling has been extended into a complete digital workflow supporting product design, pricing, underwriting, issuance, and parametric payouts.
This shift reflects a move from validating insight to executing insurance. L1A Risk now directly informs underwriting decisions and portfolio management, positioning the company to bring specialty-crop products to market rather than remaining an analytics layer.
What impact has the GIA had on L1A:
GIA helped clarify how our risk intelligence translates into insurance products rather than remaining a technical capability. That direction shaped our subsequent participation in InsureTechNY MGA Lab and accelerated our transition to an integrated insurance platform.
GIA also expanded our engagement with the insurance community in Iowa, particularly in Des Moines, strengthening our exposure to regulatory, actuarial, and underwriting perspectives. That work led to a crop actuarial collaboration with Drake University, where thirty senior data analytics and actuarial students will support actuarial modeling and crop model validation tied to L1A Risk and our initial insurance products this coming semester, in collaboration with Lendie Follett, Associate Professor of Business Analytics.
Where do you see L1A headed in 2026, what can we expect to see over the coming year:
In 2026, our focus is launching our first parametric specialty-crop insurance product, a heat-stress coverage for almonds that is currently in active development. This product will serve as our initial proof point, supported by secured capacity and a fully operational digital workflow.
From there, we plan to expand into adjacent opportunities by region, crop, and peril, using the same underwriting framework and risk intelligence. Growth will be measured by insured exposure, policy performance, and portfolio outcomes. Our longer-term vision is to build the underwriting foundation for specialty agriculture globally.
What else would should we know about L1A:
Layer 1 Agriculture is building with global expansion in mind. Launching in the U.S. allows us to validate underwriting performance, workflows, and parametric structures in a well-defined regulatory environment.
As performance is proven, we intend to expand with partners into international markets where specialty crops are economically central. Latin America, particularly Brazil, represents a strong next step given its role as a major producer and export hub facing similar insurance gaps.
How Can the GIA ecosystem help:
The GIA community can support Layer 1 Agriculture through introductions to investors, capacity providers, experienced insurance operators, and specialty-crop distribution partners as we approach live product launch.
We also value visibility through GIA channels and continued connection within the community. Thoughtful amplification and warm introductions materially support our growth at this stage.
Check out substack articles written by Roberta Leão here.
Contact:Website; LinkedIn
Email: rleao@l1a.ai
