Cimate Resilience with Employee Benefits:
Nakita Devlin from Ric Platform Services Weighs in on the MGA Lab:
When Ric Platform Services (Ric) joined our MGA Lab, they brought a bold thesis: climate resilience belongs in employee benefits
With decades of insurance experience, the Ric team joined MGA Lab to pressure-test their pitch, prepare for capacity, and accelerate their roadmap.
The Problem with Group Benefits
Traditional group benefits weren’t designed for a climate-challenged world. Employees miss work, lose wages, or face out-of-pocket recovery costs after climate disasters — and most employer programs don’t cover that.
Ric is changing that. They’re building a parametric MGA focused on climate-triggered micro-benefits financial payouts that employees can access automatically after severe weather events, like extreme rainfall.
“We want to make group benefits frictionless — for brokers and for their clients,” says Nakita, Ric’s Co-Founder.
“The goal is better experience, better data, and ultimately, better outcomes.”
Why Join MGA Lab If You Already Know the Industry?
With 10+ years in the insurance sector, Nakita came in with a clear product vision and an understanding of the buyer. But building an MGA requires more than insight — it requires process, modeling, and proof.
Move faster, focus harder, and get real-world feedback from people who’ve done it before.
“Even with our network, we found real value in the program,” Nakita shared. “The mentors didn’t just give advice — they did the work with us. Underwriting guidelines, data room prep, pitch refinement..”
“Things that would’ve taken us months to figure out, we knocked out in weeks.”
What Made MGA Lab Different?
For Ric, the MGA Lab’s edge wasn’t just access — it was the candor and intensity of the support.
From refining projections to assembling war-ready pitch materials, the Ric team left the program with deliverables in hand and a clear roadmap forward.
And the result?
On capacity day, Ric connected with a potential capacity partner — a relationship that’s now moving toward a formal agreement.
“Roi was tough in the best way possible,” Nakita laughed. “He grilled us harder than any reinsurer did — and because of that, we walked into capacity conversations better prepared.”
Why It Worked — Even for Veterans
“A lot of people in this space think accelerators are just for startups figuring it out,” said Nakita. “But you can tell when a program has real industry expertise behind it — this wasn’t a surface-level experience. It was targeted, timely, and packed with people who know what actually matters in insurance.”
That combination of credibility, connections, and compression is what makes the MGA Lab stand apart.
As Nakita put it:
“Do they give you money? No. Do they take equity? Yes. But what do you get? Expertise and conversations that would have taken a year to get done. We did it in three months. It’s hard to put a dollar amount on that kind of acceleration.”
What’s Next for Ric?
Ric is scaling through national benefit partners to bring climate-triggered micro-benefits to employees across the country.
They’re also working on a white paper for HR leaders about the financial impact of weather-related absenteeism — and how parametric benefits can solve it, which we’ll be sharing soon through the InsurTech NY network.
And yes — they’ll be back.
““This wasn’t just a one-time sprint,” Nakita said. “It’s a long-term network and we’ll keep building with it.”
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