---
title: "Mastercard and Exante"
description: "Mastercard and Exante's Business Continuity Indicator uses anonymised transactional data to detect business interruption instantly, accelerating SME claims validation and paving the way for parametric non-damage coverage."
canonical_url: "https://exante.io/news/mastercard-bci-partnership"
last_updated: "2026-07-08T19:30:57.117Z"
---

For most small business owners, traditional business interruption insurance is fundamentally broken. When an unexpected crisis hits, a business needs immediate cash flow to survive and keep trading. Yet, the standard loss adjustment process requires mountain ranges of paperwork, evidence, and desktop research. Valid claims can take months—sometimes even a year—to settle. As Alice rightly points out, when you are running an enterprise, payment speed is just as vital as the total amount you receive.

That is where the partnership between Mastercard and Exante comes in. Together, we have developed the Business Continuity Indicator (BCI), and it is proving to be a complete game-changer for the industry.

### How the Business Continuity Indicator Works

Instead of waiting for a business to prove its individual losses after the fact, the BCI leverages anonymised, granular transactional data from Mastercard. By analyzing real-time spending activity across specific geographic grid squares, the tool can instantly detect when a disruption occurs.

Because it tracks community-wide transaction trends rather than just looking at policyholders, it provides an objective, immediate picture of an event. For insurers and loss adjusters, the validation process becomes incredibly straightforward:

- **Instant Logging:** They simply log onto a digital dashboard.
- **Location Mapping:** They enter the business address and the date of the disruption.
- **Immediate Proof:** The BCI instantly generates a timeline comparing expected transactions against actual transactions, alongside a regional spending heatmap.

This means evidence is collected in seconds, claims are approved rapidly, and vital capital gets to the business owner when they need it most.

### Detecting Non-Physical Damage Disruption

What makes this data-led approach so powerful is its ability to track events that traditional insurance struggles to measure quickly. In her interview, Alice shares two brilliant examples of how this works in practice:

**The Regional Impact (e.g., Rail Strikes):** A transport strike does not cause physical damage to a shop front, but it absolutely tanks footfall. The BCI safely identifies that transactional volume has plummeted for all businesses near the affected stations, validating the interruption instantly.

**The Sector Impact (e.g., Avian Flu):** A crisis like avian flu hits specific industries rather than specific places. The BCI can isolate spend by sector, showing that poultry businesses are facing severe disruption while the coffee shops next door are operating as normal.

### The Future: Payment-Led Parametric Insurance

The most exciting takeaway from Alice's interview is where this technology is heading next. Mastercard and Exante are moving towards full parametric non-damage business interruption (NDBI) products.

Under a parametric policy, the need to negotiate a settlement is eliminated entirely. The BCI data acts as the ultimate objective trigger. The moment transactional activity in an area drops below a predefined threshold for a set number of days, a payout is triggered automatically.

By removing friction, lowering operational costs for insurers, and delivering rapid lifelines to businesses, this partnership is bridging the trust gap in commercial insurance. It is a massive step forward for building resilient high streets and cities, and we are incredibly proud to be shaping the future of parametric coverage alongside Mastercard.

Full interview available here: [https://www.instech.co/knowledge-centre/mastercard-payment-led-parametric-insurance/](https://www.instech.co/knowledge-centre/mastercard-payment-led-parametric-insurance/)