Insurtech weekly news roundup: Aug. 12
Corvus Insurance
MGA insurtech Corvus Insurance has chosen Madhu Tadikonda as its new CEO.
He succeeds founder Phil Edmundson, who will take on the new role of executive chair and chair of the board of Corvus. In his new role, he’ll focus on supporting the growth of the company as it expands internationally.
Tadikonda joined Corvus in 2021 as president. Before that, he was global chief underwriting officer at AIG, and previously led data science efforts for AIG’s Commercial Insurance arm. He also co-founded Archipelago, a risk data platform that uses AI to digitize risk for large owners of commercial property.
Corvus, based in Boston, offers “smart commercial insurance” products informed by AI-driven risk data. It aims for the small-to-medium sized business market, with coverage options including cyber, tech, E&O, cargo and reinsurance.
In January 2022, the company acquired London, UK-based Tarian Underwriting Ltd. from Beat Capital Partners Ltd. It is a cyber underwriting platform that works on behalf of a consortium of Lloyd’s syndicates. Now rebranded as Corvus Underwriting Ltd., the division will help fuel Corvus’s international expansion efforts.
Socotra
Socotra said it has signed 12 insurtechs and insurance technology companies to its new Socotra App MarketPlace.
The company bills its platform as the first cloud-native software app marketplace for insurers, designed to reduce time-to-market from months to minutes.
Socotra’s initial 12 platform partners: CAPE Analytics, Coherent, DataArt, Fenris Digital, Five Sigma, Fize, Fulcrum Digital, Geosite, GhostDraft, One Inc., Tranzpay and Verisk.
The companies’ coverage areas include: property intelligence, workflow streamlining, problem-solving, predictive scoring, claims management, insurance policy data, machine learning, geospatial data, customer experience, payments and data analytics.
At-Bay
At-Bay, a digital cyber managing general underwriter (MGU), recently launched its new Miscellaneous Professional Liability (MPL) product.
The San Francisco-based company claims to be the first to offer an automatically underwritten policy that customizes coverage and pricing across more than 50 diverse classes of businesses.
At-Bay said that the new offering helps expand its product roster beyond its flagship cyber liability and technology errors and omissions cover. Its new MPL product will be available from the At-Bay Broker Platform, which is designed to help brokers generate a quote in less than two minutes.
At-Bay is underwriting its MPL insurance policies as an MGA through a Markel Corporation subsidiary. It provides capacity up to $5 million in limits for businesses up to $25 million in revenue.
“We are leveraging our technology to provide a seamless digital experience, one that allows brokers to quote faster, bind faster and maximize efficiency,” Brett Sadoff, At-Bay’s head of insurance, said in prepared remarks.
Kissterra
Kissterra, an insurtech focused on an insurance market operating system, said it now generates $100 million in annual revenue.
The company said it has been steadily building its annual revenue since launching in 2015.
Kissterra’s announcement comes with news that it has upgraded its Dedicated Marketing OS with an improved dashboard for granular targeting and an enhanced user interface.
Kissterra raised $76 million in Series A financing in 2021 that helped propel its growth in the US insurance market. Kissterra is now working with more than 40 top carriers and has expanded its executive roster.
Planck
Planck, an AI-fueled business intelligence platform, launched a new risk search engine built specifically for commercial insurance research.
The new tool is designed to return real-time results mined from billions of public sources and unindexed government records. It is accessible via an on-demand web application or API integration. The complete and up-to-date digital presence of a business is returned in aggregate, the company said.
Results can be sorted by source type, including a map outlining additional geospatial risk data. Planck built in further refinement capabilities to enable underwriters to filter within the offered results and uncover answers to their specific underwriting questions.
“This streamlined access to vital information empowers insurers with a complete picture of a business to make critical underwriting decisions quickly and accurately so they can pivot to the more complicated challenges,” Noa Kalechstain, vice president of product strategy at Planck, said in prepared remarks.
Hippo
Hippo has added John “Jay” Nichols Jr. to its board of directors.
Hippo is a home insurance group and insurtech focused on proactive home protection.
Nichols has more than 40 years of experience, most recently as interim CEO and chairman of the board at Protective Insurance Company, where he oversaw its acquisition by Progressive Insurance Company. Before that, he was CEO of Axis Reinsurance Ltd. At RenaissanceRe, he held various leadership roles including president over a 15-year period.
