About Stable
Combining state of the art technology and old fashioned values has helped us build a world class platform to help commodity businesses around the world manage risk.
Commodity supply chains have never been more fragile.
Recent events such as Covid and Ukraine have exposed the vulnerability of global supply chains and impacted margins around the world.
Procurement departments, risk managers, finance and treasury teams, (not to mention producers) across the world had to scramble to secure supplies, manage enormous price movements and try to maintain their margins as best they could when even the best laid plans went awry and forecasts were shown to be totally wrong..
Sadly none of us have a crystal ball, which means that whether your team is based on a farm or in a finance department, volatility in your business can be catastrophic for your margins.
In 2016 we founded Stable to try to reimagine a solution to this problem by focusing
on two key areas:
on two key areas:
- Risk management - it is far too complex and we wanted to make it simple and effective
- The long tail of illiquid commodities - Less than 15% of the world's commodities are traded on transparent markets with easy access to risk management tools like futures contracts. This long tail of commodities not traded on exchanges is where we could add the most value, so that's where we started
In 2016 we started with just 12 industry benchmarks and only 4 people on the team. Today the company has three divisions, Stable Agriculture, Stable Renewables and Stable Packaging and employs over 50 people across America and Europe protecting clients across more than 300 commodity markets.
Stable pioneered price insurance by building a simple way to manage commodity price risk and a portfolio that has become diverse and strong.
Our experience, financial strength, investors and focus is why we are trusted by some of the largest commodity companies in the world to manage their risk.
Fast forward today and we are still breaking new ground with our state of the art platform becoming the hub for managing risks in many forms across the entire commodity supply chain.
Unlike other regulated insurers, commodity risk management is our sole focus. Our goal is to take risk in all its forms out of the supply chain, so businesses around the world can invest in the future with confidence.
Fast forward today and we are still breaking new ground with our state of the art platform becoming the hub for managing risks in many forms across the entire commodity supply chain.
Unlike other regulated insurers, commodity risk management is our sole focus. Our goal is to take risk in all its forms out of the supply chain, so businesses around the world can invest in the future with confidence.
Key Stats
Founded 2016 by our
CEO Rich Counsell
50 staff
7 PhDs on the team
$150m in capital
Leadership team has over 100 years of combined experienced in risk management
Contracts backed by combined balance
sheets of $14bn
Shareholders include industry giants Continental Grain, Syngenta and CPPIB
Stable is a
fully regulated commercial insurer
fully regulated commercial insurer
+300
indexes
indexes
Raised over $100m
to grow the company
to grow the company
Timeline
2016
Started in the UK after our founder was awarded
a Nuffield Scholarship to study commodity risk management
2017
R&D phase with Liverpool, Harvard and Oxford Universities
2018
Became a Lloyds of London Coverholder
2019
Opened our first US offices in Chicago and NYC
2020
Raised Series A
2022
Raised $60m Series B
2023
Became a regulated commercial insurer
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Our Leadership
Richard Counsell
Chief Executive Officer
After growing up on a farm, Rich founded and led food and technology companies across the US and Europe. With a mission to reimagine commodity risk management he now divides his time between London, New York and Bermuda.
Marco Rodriguez
Chief Operating Officer
Marco previously held senior roles in private equity, investment banking, and corporate development where he gained a wealth of experience in what it takes to build a successful company. In his current role as Stable's first ever COO, he leads the operations teams with a focus on driving growth through strategy, creation and execution. He has an MBA from Harvard and is based in Houston.
Louise Derbes
Chief Growth Officer
Louise was responsible for commodity derivative sales at Rabobank for over 20 years before joining Stable. She has an MBA from INSEAD, speaks 3 languages and helps clients across the Americas to manage their commodity risk. We haven't found anything she can't do yet!
Dr. Simon Wang
Chief Technology Officer
After completing his PhD, Simon joined the TECH team as our CTO. Based in London, Simon manages the team made up of data scientists and quants in London and New York.
Renee Laird
Senior Advisor: Strategy
Previously the Global Head of Commercial Agriculture and OTC Commodities at R. J. O'Brien, Renee has extensive experience in physical and capital markets, futures and hedge fund/asset management as well as building high performing teams around the world.
Julia Henderson
Senior Advisor: Insurance
An experienced Chief Underwriting Officer with a demonstrated history of working in senior roles across the insurance industry. Julia has an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Bermuda.
Andy Leaver
Senior Advisor: Revenue
For the last 20 years, Andy has placed himself at the intersection of the tectonic shifts in the software industry, building global teams from scratch in SaaS, Cloud, Data, Open Source and AI businesses. His passion for technology and leadership has helped me create explosive growth at Hortonworks, Workday, Bazaarvoice, SuccessFactors, and Ariba.
Charles Norton-Smith
Senior Advisor: Risk
Charles has extensive experience in the insurance and banking world: he started his career in the Lloyd’s market as a broker, then built a successful MGA business in USA and more recently has been a sell-side M&A banker, specialising in Insurance, based in New York and then London. Charles attended Oxford University and was a member of Lloyd’s for 25 years.
Our Awards
We're honored that our work to help commodity businesses manage risk has been awarded a wide range of innovation awards from the insurance and commodity risk management sectors
An Introduction from
our Founder & CEO
Growing up on a family farm with my parents and two sisters was one of the happiest times in my life. It was always slightly chaotic, with animals running everywhere and a fantastic cast of local characters who helped out by milking cows, keeping sheep alive and driving tractors. While it was a lot of fun (if you were a child who could enjoy the chaos without having to pay the bills), I think I was always aware that a farming life wasn't always easy.
It's a business that faces constant change and has to react to new rules and consumer tastes, but also the constant threat of disease and adverse weather. As I grew older, one of the risks that interested me the most was the enormous impact of commodity prices on producers like my dad. Managing any business in an increasingly globalized market is really hard, especially without the tools that could bring certainty to our income.
After leaving the farm for a life first on the trading floor of a bank in London and then for 10 years building technology companies around the world, I found myself approaching 40 and working in Chicago at a company that was a leader in data science.
It's a business that faces constant change and has to react to new rules and consumer tastes, but also the constant threat of disease and adverse weather. As I grew older, one of the risks that interested me the most was the enormous impact of commodity prices on producers like my dad. Managing any business in an increasingly globalized market is really hard, especially without the tools that could bring certainty to our income.
After leaving the farm for a life first on the trading floor of a bank in London and then for 10 years building technology companies around the world, I found myself approaching 40 and working in Chicago at a company that was a leader in data science.
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We had an office in the Lyric Opera building which meant I walked past the CME most days and I became increasingly intrigued about what went on behind those doors and in the commodity price risk management industry in general.
In 2015/6 many new 'fintech's' were emerging that were transforming the way we invest in shares, transfer money or insure our belongings. They all had one thing in common and that was to make the opaque, complex world of finance simpler and more consumer friendly.
In 2015/6 many new 'fintech's' were emerging that were transforming the way we invest in shares, transfer money or insure our belongings. They all had one thing in common and that was to make the opaque, complex world of finance simpler and more consumer friendly.
Commodity risk management began to feel like an industry that time had forgotten.
As an outsider, it just felt overly complex and reliant on old fashioned brokers competing with each other with no point of differentiation at all. For a business exposed to commodities not traded on an exchange, you're left with very few options to manage your risk.
While I was naturally thinking about commodity producers at this early stage, what started to strike me whenever I talked to commodity consumers like food manufacturers and restaurant chains was that they too seemed hungry for a simpler, more insurance-like solution where they could protect their risk with precision, rather than hoping a cross hedge or feed plus model was going to stay robust.
Building something simple and financially strong is of course incredibly complicated, but by this stage I had attracted a world class team to help me build the business that was to become Stable.
While I was naturally thinking about commodity producers at this early stage, what started to strike me whenever I talked to commodity consumers like food manufacturers and restaurant chains was that they too seemed hungry for a simpler, more insurance-like solution where they could protect their risk with precision, rather than hoping a cross hedge or feed plus model was going to stay robust.
Building something simple and financially strong is of course incredibly complicated, but by this stage I had attracted a world class team to help me build the business that was to become Stable.
Six years later, Stable is trusted by some of the
world's largest companies to help them manage
their risk across many sectors and industries.
That word trust, is something I think about regularly at Stable. Stable isn't just software or market news, people trust us to help them manage the financial health of their margins and their business. That's a huge responsibility and that trust in me and my team is never something we take for granted.
We're honored that our work to reimagine commodity risk management has grown into something that's valued by our clients around the world, but I still think like a farmer in the way we build our portfolio, balancing risk across many diverse commodities, or the way we build partnerships that are designed to last for a lifetime.
This is a great industry, with great people and businesses doing extraordinary things and it's a privilege to play our part in helping them invest in people, ideas and the future."
We're honored that our work to reimagine commodity risk management has grown into something that's valued by our clients around the world, but I still think like a farmer in the way we build our portfolio, balancing risk across many diverse commodities, or the way we build partnerships that are designed to last for a lifetime.
This is a great industry, with great people and businesses doing extraordinary things and it's a privilege to play our part in helping them invest in people, ideas and the future."
Rich Counsell
Chief Executive Officer, Stable
