Digital Lloyd's syndicate Ki goes live with broking heavyweights

Brit's algorithmically-driven, follow-only Lloyd's syndicate Ki has onboarded its first trading partners including broking giants Aon, Marsh, Willis, Gallagher and Lockton.

Other broking partners include Lloyd’s intermediaries BGCI, including Ed and Besso, Bishopsgate, BMS, Guy Carpenter, Howden, Lockton Re, Miller, Price Forbes, AmWins / THB, Tysers, Aon Re and Willis Re.

Ki has agreed to provide capacity to each trading partner in 2021, giving their clients security about placing business in Lloyd’s next year.

Ki is a newly formed follow-only digital business which will write its first risk incepting in January 2021. It will underwrite using an algorithm-driven approach and offer instant follow capacity through its proprietary digital platform.

Ki’s algorithm is built by Google Cloud and accessed directly by brokers.

The syndicate recently secured $500 million of committed capital from funds managed by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and Fairfax Financial Holdings.

Dan Hearsum, managing director of Ki, said: “We are very proud to launch our digital platform with our initial trading partners and through collaboration with them we have already allocated the majority of our 2021 capacity, bringing valuable capacity and certainty to those brokers’ clients and business partners across 31 lines of business. The response from our trading partners has been phenomenal, with real commitment shown to embrace this new chapter for Lloyd’s.”

Mark Allan, CEO of Ki, added: “We are delighted to have delivered the first digital follow syndicate in Lloyd’s, with the onboarding of these partners enabling their brokers to dramatically accelerate access to follow capacity for their clients. The simplicity of the platform aligned with the commitment of capacity brings much needed security to the market.”