(Image source: Adaptive Insurance homepage.)
Adaptive Insurance (Austin, Texas) is led by CEO and co-founder Mike Gulla, whose 20-year insurance career spans Nationwide, Allstate, Hippo, and advisory work for MGAs. The company, founded in 2024, is focused on developing parametric products designed to deliver fast, event-triggered payouts for underinsured disruptions.
Gulla’s background spans much of the U.S. insurance landscape. He began his career at Nationwide, working in catastrophe management and underwriting in the Southeast, including the Tuscaloosa tornadoes of 2011. He later moved to Allstate, where he helped build the carrier’s direct-to-consumer home insurance program and expand it to 35 states. In 2016, he joined Hippo as its first insurance hire and worked across underwriting, product development, compliance, and regulatory matters, ultimately helping establish Hippo’s Austin office before leaving shortly before the company went public.
Mike Gulla, Co-Founder and CEO, Adaptive Insurance.
After three years of consulting for MGAs and insurance startups—work that expanded during the market uncertainty following the 2021 IPO wave—Gulla began exploring new product ideas with Montauk Climate Corp., a venture studio founded by Philip Krim. Together they developed the concept that would become Adaptive: a parametric-focused MGA able to use third-party data, automated triggers, and event verification to deliver rapid payouts for smaller, more frequent events.
Grid Protect: A Short-Duration Parametric Outage Product
Adaptive’s first product, Grid Protect, is a short-duration parametric offering designed to pay quickly when power outages exceed defined local thresholds. The company partnered with Tokio Marine HCC for capacity and launched the product in 18 states, representing roughly 53 percent of the U.S. population.
Traditional business interruption coverage typically requires physical damage and has a waiting period of around 72 hours. By contrast, short outages of 8 to 24 hours can severely affect small businesses, particularly during peak periods, yet remain uncovered. Grid Protect offers limits ranging from $100 up to $50,000, with payment determined by the occurrence and duration of the outage rather than by adjustment of a property loss.
The value proposition centers on speed and liquidity. Small businesses often fail not because of catastrophic destruction but because of lack of immediate access to capital. Parametric triggers are designed to close that gap by delivering funds quickly after the event—far sooner than is possible under traditional adjustment timelines.
Extending Parametric Coverage to Flood and Other Event-Driven Risks
Adaptive is developing additional parametric products, including flood. To support that work, the company is collaborating with 7Analytics (Bergen, Norway), which Gulla describes as providing highly localized flood modeling based on topography and runoff patterns. The goal is to address exposures that fall outside FEMA’s designated flood zones, many of which rely on outdated maps and do not reflect actual risk.
Gulla notes that traditional indemnity flood insurance is concentrated in NFIP, with private carriers and MGAs covering only a small portion of the market. Parametric flood products, he suggests, may help close this gap by offering simple, event-based triggers for households and businesses that lack access to conventional coverage.
Arik Yelovitch, CTO and Co-Founder, Adaptive Insurance.
Adaptive currently employs six people and anticipates adding only six to ten more over the next 18 to 24 months—none of whom, Gulla says, will be underwriters. The company’s underwriting process is automated and driven by data sources and a technology platform that evaluates eligibility, triggers, and event verification. This structure is intended to enable rapid scaling and streamlined operations without the need for traditional underwriting or large claims teams.
Prevention, Consumer Behavior, and the Role of AI
A conversation with Gulla turns frequently to mitigation, prevention, and consumer behavior—areas he has explored since designing Hippo’s IoT-driven Smart Home program. He notes that many losses stem from preventable events or from misunderstandings of insurance. A common example he offers is the hot water heater failure: many homeowners assume the insurer will simply “pay for it,” not recognizing the impact of deductibles, premium increases, and ancillary damage.
Gulla also highlights the emerging dynamic in which AI becomes a tool for consumers as well as carriers. He observes that policyholders now have access to widely available generative AI tools that can guide them through claims processes and increase their sophistication during a claim. This means the industry will need to focus not only on claims efficiency but on prevention and helping consumers make better decisions before events occur.
Gulla emphasizes the role parametric products can play in giving customers rapid access to funds following disruptive events. The approach is not intended to replace traditional indemnity coverage but to address needs that fall between high-severity catastrophic events and the everyday disruptions that traditional policies are not designed to cover. For Adaptive, the aim is to expand the availability of event-triggered capital and give people the ability to make timely decisions in the immediate aftermath of an outage, flood, or similar event.
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