Risk Management
Augment Risk | December 04, 2023
Augment Risk, the pioneering new reinsurance brokerage firm, today announced the arrival of Andrew Matson as Chief Executive Officer. Matson will build on Augment Risk’s significant traction, having already bound $1 billion of premium in its first year of business. Augment Risk’s initial success is a testament to the firm’s transformative ‘Client, not class of business’ approach that protects and grows client equity value.
“Augment Risk was founded to address a fundamental structural problem in the insurance and reinsurance markets. We champion the need for a shift from outdated practices of ‘products sold at prices’ to better cater to our clients’ needs,” Matson said. “I am thrilled to work with some of the most exceptional talent in the industry. We believe we can transform reinsurance broking for the better by focusing on our client’s entire business, creating partnerships with reinsurers, and enhancing equity value by better managing capital, reducing earnings volatility, and expanding the margins of our clients. Our approach has never been done at this scale.”
The reinsurance industry has remained unchanged for generations. But with the advent of an increased interest rate environment, the rise in loss cost through inflation, and challenges mounting from natural catastrophes, the need to manage capital more efficiently has never been more important. Augment Risk has implemented a numerical approach to help clients better utilize their capital to maintain or improve their financial strength while achieving their business goals.
At the heart of Augment Risk’s approach is a relentless focus on the client’s balance sheet, where capital has been blocked from being put to its best use due to operational complexity, vertical barriers, and mismanagement of risks. Augment Risk unlocks this opportunity by managing volatility through tailored solutions that are meticulously crafted to optimize enterprise value and are agnostic toward all forms of capital—a key differentiation from the conventional one-size-fits-all approach.
Matson’s deep experience and understanding of the challenges facing reinsurers’ businesses are key to executing the vision of Augment Risk’s groundbreaking broker model. His accomplishments in the industry have spanned the globe and brought billions of dollars of premium to the global reinsurance market.
“Andrew has the experience and conviction to lead Augment Risk’s next chapter of growth, and we are pleased to welcome him as CEO,” said Sam Gaynor, Managing Director, Altamont Capital Partners, which announced $100 million in funding for Augment Risk earlier this year. “Augment Risk addresses a clear market need to help global customers manage complex risk capital challenges based on efficiency, with a model poised to transform the reinsurance industry.”
“Augment Risk provides the depth and breadth of expertise to ensure leaders of global companies have the capital, tools, and strategic insights necessary to thrive in a complex, often volatile environment; a one-size-fits-all approach to reinsurance doesn’t work and isn’t always in the best interest of their businesses,” said Keoni Schwartz, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Altamont Capital Partners. “This puts Augment Risk in a completely different category of reinsurance, building a new market in the industry to deliver better outcomes for these businesses.”
About Augment Risk
Augment Risk is a risk capital and reinsurance solutions broker, focused on designing and placing bespoke protections for a variety of clients. With a wide range of solutions, Augment creates growth and equity value through tailored transactions to deliver long-term capital and partnerships. Augment Risk’s expertise extends beyond (re)insurance, allowing the company to disrupt the value chain and build creative, value-accretive solutions for individual client needs.
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Risk Management
Nearmap | December 07, 2023
Nearmap, one of the world's largest location intelligence and aerial imagery solutions providers, has signed an agreement to acquire Betterview, a leading property intelligence and risk management platform in the insurance industry.
Founded in Australia in 2007, Nearmap expanded operations into the U.S. in 2014 to help companies better visualize the truth on the ground to make more informed business decisions. Today's announcement marks a significant milestone in the advancement of the Nearmap global growth strategy. This will reinforce the company's position as a leading source of imagery intelligence, data and solutions, and expand and complement its expertise and capabilities for insurance customers and partners.
"The Nearmap acquisition of Betterview is transformative for the industry,"
said Andy Watt, CEO of Nearmap.
Integrating the Betterview platform and AI solutions into the Nearmap technology stack will enable better visualization of the truth on the ground with a richer, more powerful set of AI capabilities that combine the best of both companies. This is a significant milestone in our ongoing efforts to innovate solutions for insurance carriers, and expand our presence within the property and casualty space.
[Source -PR Newswire]
Betterview is an established and trusted source of property intelligence and risk management for the insurance industry, applying artificial intelligence and computer vision to help identify and mitigate property risk, improve and automate underwriting and inspection workflows, and provide a more productive, seamless customer experience.
"Combining the offerings of two best-in-class providers will deliver greater impact for insurers," said Betterview Co-Founder and CEO David Lyman. "The acquisition of Betterview by Nearmap will increase access to premium imagery and cutting-edge, scalable property intelligence solutions for the insurance industry."
"We are optimistic about the outcomes this acquisition will bring to our customers, the potential for developing even greater products together, and the impact it will have on the future of the insurance industry," said Betterview Co-Founder and COO Dave Tobias.
Nearmap and Betterview will harness the power of the leading image intelligence and property risk-management technology solutions — including a historical archive for change analysis, comprehensive post-catastrophe imagery, and AI attributes — to provide customers and partners with greater certainty and clarity, through
More efficient development of insurance solutions and capabilities
Faster and more accurate underwriting, property condition identification, and overall mitigation of risk
Enhanced visualization and interpretation of over 100 AI-powered property attributes
Deeper analytics, with more recency, and regularity through insights easily accessible within a browser, via API or business intelligence tools, or seamlessly integrated with existing underwriting or claims core systems
From imagery to insights to answers, this acquisition aligns with the Nearmap long-term global vision to be the source of truth that shapes our livable world.
Completion of the acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Jefferies served as exclusive financial advisor to Betterview.
About Nearmap
Nearmap provides easy, instant access to high-resolution aerial imagery, city-scale 3D content, AI data sets, and geospatial tools. Using its own patented camera systems and processing software, Nearmap captures wide-scale urban areas in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand several times each year, making current content instantly available in the cloud via web app or API integration. Every day, Nearmap helps thousands of users conduct virtual site visits for deep, data-driven insights—enabling informed decisions, streamlined operations, and better financial performance. Founded in Australia in 2007, Nearmap is one of the largest aerial survey companies in the world.
About Betterview
Betterview is the Property Intelligence & Risk Management Solution the insurance industry depends on to identify and mitigate property risk, improve underwriting and inspection efficiency, and build a more transparent customer experience. Applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) and computer vision to aerial imagery and geospatial data, Betterview generates the most accurate property information insurers trust to automate pricing, underwriting, and renewals while focusing strategic action on critical properties, helping transform property insurance from Repair and Replace to Predict and Prevent.
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Insurance Technology
PR Newswire | September 28, 2023
Expert.ai unveiled today its "Enterprise Language Model for Insurance" – ELMI, a cutting-edge innovation in domain trained language models, set to help insurers reach their process automation and digital transformation goals with the highest accuracy. By simplifying and powering the interaction with language data within the expert.ai Platform for Insurance, Insurers can access solutions that scale and take advantage of deep insurance domain expertise combined with the best and most cost-effective attributes of Large Language Models (LLMs) to automate core processes.
Through the expert.ai Platform for Insurance, ELMI supports key capabilities, including:
Generative Summarization: generate accurate summaries, condensing vast amounts of claim or policy information into concise insights, saving time and accelerating straight through processing or human review activities.
Zero Shot Extraction: extract crucial insurance data from structured/unstructured, handwritten/typed, good quality/bad quality sources with accuracy and automatically normalize output formats and add medical annotations such as ICD 9/10 medical codes.
Generative Q&A: answer questions quickly so underwriters and claims handlers can extract meaningful insights from proprietary case files by asking questions using natural language queries.
Walt Mayo, expert.ai CEO, said: "Delivering on our commitment to innovation and higher level of efficiencies in the insurance sector, ELMI sets a new standard for AI-driven language solutions. As part of the expert.ai Platform for Insurance, ELMI equips insurers with the generative AI tools they need to automate the complex landscape of language-driven processes, while also offering substantial cost savings."
Unlike general knowledge large language models, ELMI is:
Trained for Insurance: Eliminating the cost and complexity of training language models, ELMI is engineered with a deep understanding of the insurance domain, providing insurers with generative AI capability ready to tackle underwriting and claims processing challenges.
Built for the real-world: ELMI is integrated into expert.ai end-to-end insurance solutions to meet the practical challenges of AI at scale across insurance workflows from underwriting to claims. Expert.ai purpose-built approach addresses critical shortcomings of general-purpose language models and brings the power of generative AI to improve accuracy and reduce costs.
Cost Optimized: When compared to hosted token-based models, ELMI offers a more cost-effective solution, reducing expenses related to usage, hosting, running, and maintenance, while still delivering superior performance and accuracy.
Secure and Compliant: ELMI is designed to ensure compliance with the most stringent governance standards and does not share sensitive insurance data.
Cloud-agnostic: Offering the flexibility to deploy on any cloud infrastructure or on-premises, ELMI deployments easily meet insurer's varying requirements.
For inquiries, demonstrations, or more information about ELMI, please request a demo.
About expert.ai
Expert.ai is the leading enterprise AI company solving complex language challenges. Our solutions deliver key information for publishers, streamline operations for insurers, drive revelations for pharmaceutical giants, and enhance customer interactions within financial services – all while automating traditional labor-intensive methods. By combining deep domain expertise with the finest attributes of Large Language Models, Machine Learning, and Symbolic AI, we are at the leading edge of linguistic advancements in hybrid AI. With a global presence in Europe and North America, we proudly serve clients that include AXA XL, Zurich Insurance Group, Generali, Sanofi, EBSCO, The Associated Press, Bloomberg INDG, and Dow Jones. For more information, visit https://www.expert.ai/
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