Watts and Associates

Watts and Associates, Inc., is a Billings, Montana, based economic consulting firm specializing in risk management innovation. The core competency of Watts and Associates is the melding of econometrics and statistics applied to large data sets resulting in new paradigms of automated risk management products. Risk management specialties include agricultural insurance development, review, and analytics; weather risk assessment for all industries; and development of data mining and risk analysis web tools. Founded in 1986, the firm's projects have included more than 50 major ongoing or completed contracts with clients including the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Risk Management Agency (RMA), Agri and AgriFood Canada, World Bank, World Bank International Finance Corporation (IFC). In addition to the large contracts, W&A has performed hundreds of smaller projects with an extensive client list including the U.S. Department of Justice, Farm Service Agency (FSA), and the State of Montana, as well as agricultural producers groups and private entities including over 1,500 individual clients. In addition to contracted efforts, Watts and Associates, Inc. has sponsored initiatives resulting in: Changes in United States federal law to assist producer groups in having a voice in risk management products; Development of commercial weather risk management platform (eWeatherRisk); Development of a non-profit corporation to assist agricultural risk management in developing countries (IIARM) and Development of a catastrophic livestock insurance prototype. W&A's experience with agricultural risk management extends from avocados to zucchini and has addressed such unique production practices as those for maple syrup and Christmas trees in addition to a focus on livestock risk management. W&A is driven by providing reliable, actuarially sound, effective and affordable risk management tools and products.