Picnic Labs has launched a discretionary mutual that provides building, contents and business interruption risk protection to a large consortium of retailers, covering about $500 million of assets.

The portfolio, Picnic’s sixth discretionary mutual, includes more than 110 locations, mostly across Queensland. Some are eligible for cyclone insurance.

Sydney-based Picnic, which is an agent for Pacific International Insurance and designs and operates alternative risk transfer solutions, began offering cyclone cover to members of the Our Ark mutual it manages in October.

CEO Charles Pollack says the six mutuals it supports in Australia, New Zealand and Britain all have products tailored to members, and the team is working on similar solutions with brokers and their clients.

“For this group, both discretionary risk protection for buildings, contents and business interruption and cyclone insurance were required and available at launch,” he said. “The broker who had worked with this group for a number of years saw the opportunity after placing other clients into Our Ark.”

The retail group members have saved about 25% compared with their previous solution, Picnic says.  

The cyclone insurance policies are reinsured by the Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation and are available to members when risk protection is also in place for the relevant buildings and their contents.  

Picnic also provides actuarial modelling, product design, pricing, accounting and other services for its mutual members.