$1m insurtech has Asia in its sights

One of the founders of a startup that captures, enhances, scores and transfers high-resolution, peril-specific exposure and risk data has highlighted the Asian markets as a key target for the company, which has raised more than $1 million in seed financing from investors including Menlo Ventures, Anthemis Baloise Strategic Ventures and Plug and Play.

Jason Futers, co-founder and chief executive of Insurdata, is a former executive director of Ag Risk, formerly the Asia Risk Centre (ARC), a Singapore-based company focused on building models for assessing and managing agriculture risk from natural catastrophes. Its focus was agriculture risk in China, India and Australia. Futers was on the board for a few years until earlier this year.

Before this, he worked for RMS, where he held various positions including head of emerging risk innovation and CEO of RMS Japan. He was also a member of the advisory board of the Cambridge University Centre for Risk Studies.

“We see Asia as a key focus and have started discussions in the region. Our technology has been built to be scalable globally, with Asia a key territory for us,” Futers said.

Insurdata provides re/insurance companies with building-level property data delivered at the point of underwriting to support accurate pricing, underwriting and portfolio management decisions. The data are generated through desktop and mobile technology, and accessed via an application programming interface (API) through existing risk assessment and exposure management workflows, including standard formats such as Microsoft Excel.

Insurdata technology includes mobile augmented reality and 3D model creation, providing desktop and mobile solutions. A range of property-specific data is developed at the point of underwriting, including peril-relevant attributes, dimension and elevation measurements, and made immediately available throughout the risk transfer process.

The granularity of the data enables underwriters to generate 3D property-specific models, and facilitates retroactive analysis of risks based on the latest peril model modifiers and risk assessment requirements, according to the company.

“The exposure data available to the insurance industry for underwriting purposes as well as overall portfolio management is simply not accurate enough,” said Futers. “At Insurdata, we want to bring greater clarity to the underwriting process through providing the industry at large with access to much more granular and peril-specific data, and ensuring exposure data is always relevant and up to date.

“We are at an early stage, but we’re moving rapidly and the market reaction has been phenomenal. We already have re/insurers piloting our solutions and benchmarking their data resolution against that provided via our technology.”

Venky Ganesan, partner at Menlo Ventures, added: “Insurdata is one of our first investments in the insurtech space. It is clear that what the firm offers to the insurance industry through providing data at a level of resolution multiple times higher than currently available will be a game-changer for insurers and reinsurers.”

Ruth Foxe Blader, director at Anthemis, added: “The lack of high resolution data on individual exposures has long been a major stumbling block for the insurance industry in terms of its ability to price risk accurately. What Insurdata provides is the data depth to support a much more refined and precise pricing approach.”

“What is truly ground-breaking about the Insurdata approach is that it offers insurance underwriters the ability to carry out a virtual walk-through of their property portfolios,” said Saeed Amidi, founder and CEO of Plug and Play.

“No other insurance technology allows insurers to get this close to the risks they cover.”

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