Aviva’s Rokstone partnership; EXL’s language model; Aon’s broking promotion

From Insurance Post this week

Depletion of smaller home claims pushing average cost up

LMA calls for underwriter training to address ‘silent’ transition

Regulation widening modernisation gap between US and Europe

Axa XL extends cyber cover to internal GenAI risks

Most complained about general insurers revealed

Covéa CEO rules out working with MGAs again

Allianz settles Various Eateries BI lawsuit

From People this week

Big interview: David Martin, Aviva

Ecclesiastical’s Coleman on why great insurer service starts with culture

Why insurers should rethink their approach to tree removal

MGAA’s Keating on avoiding a ‘boom and bust’ cycle

Q&A: Belinda Steedman, Aviva

Big Interview: Georges de Macedo, Covéa

Pick of the week

Rokstone signs direct and facultative property deal with Aviva

Deal value: N/A

Date announced: 23 October

Rokstone has signed a three-year binding authority agreement with Aviva for its direct and facultative property portfolio.

The facility aims to enable Rokstone to write global property D&F business up to $2m per risk, and the deal is likely to generate in excess of $200m (£154m) GWP over the three years, according to Rokstone. 

The new facility comes just a few weeks after Rokstone announced a multi-year $5m (£3.8m) delegated authority facility for D&F Property with Allianz Commercial. It also follows news last month of a key strategic senior underwriter hire, Ludo Araujo, who joined the eight-strong speciality underwriting team from Chaucer Syndicates.

James Potter, CEO of Rokstone, said: “Our ability to underwrite as a lead market, now with delegated authority from a number of leading A-rated markets including Allianz and Munich Re, is a ringing endorsement of our property team – a real statement of achievement for Rokstone.” 

Spencer Pimley, global delegated underwriting authority manager for Aviva Global, corporate & specialty, said: “This opportunity presents a strong and balanced Property D&F portfolio that will complement us as we continue to build and strengthen our global property DUA portfolio.”

Movo Partnership launches Accelerator for start-up brokers

Deal value: N/A

Date announced: 21 October

Movo Partnership has launched ‘Movo Accelerator,’ a platform for entrepreneurs to develop their own broking businesses.

Movo Accelerator aims to provide a solution to start-up costs and the first 12 months of trading, often the main barriers to success, according to Movo.

The investment from Accelerator covers salaries, infrastructure and the full range of essential support services to get a broker up and running in return for an equity stake in the business. 

Lea Cheesebrough, Movo Partnership CEO, said: “We’ve had great success with start-up businesses over the past five years – of the more than 100 businesses in our network over half are new start-up brokers. 

“Our experience shows that there are a lot of ambitious account execs out there with the right mix of talent, energy and drive to make a success of their own business, but some struggle to find the financial backing needed to launch, run and cover costs until they win their first clients. 

“Movo Accelerator is a bespoke solution which enables these entrepreneurs to access the funding to fulfil their dream of starting their own business.”

James Hart, Movo partnership development director, said: “I’m incredibly excited to have joined the Movo team to launch this unique and exciting proposition. 

“As an appointed representative network, Movo Partnership provides a fantastic service to brokers with everything they need to trade – from client money, banking and insurer reconciliation, to compliance, marketing and systems support. 

“Movo Accelerator takes this service to a much wider audience by providing the funds for start-up costs.

“With broker M&A in the insurance market continuing at pace, Accelerator will help the next generation of brokers get a foothold in the market.”

EXL launches specialised insurance large language model

Deal value: N/A

Date announced: 15 October

Data analytics and digital operations and solutions company EXL has launched the EXL Insurance large language model, an industry-specific LLM. 

The announcement builds on EXL’s recent initiative with Nvidia AI Enterprise, with the EXL Insurance LLM aiming to be the first LLM of its kind created to support crucial claims and underwriting tasks, such as claims reconciliation, data extraction and interpretation, question-answering, anomaly detection and chronology summarisation.

The EXL Insurance LLM has been developed to address the needs of the insurance industry, which, according to EXL, has struggled to leverage off-the-shelf, general LLMs that lack fine-tuning with private insurance data and domain-specific understanding of business processes. 

According to EXL, this level of specialisation has become critical for ensuring accuracy, reducing costs and improving consistency in industry-specific AI applications. 

According to Gartner, more than 50% of the generative AI models that enterprises use will be specific to either an industry or business function by 2027 — up from roughly 1% in 2023. 

Mohit Manchanda, EXL’s senior vice-president and head of insurance for the UK and Europe, said: “LLMs have the potential to transform insurance but generic models have not been trained on contextual data and nuanced processes. 

“With over 25 years of expertise in leveraging medical record data for a) claims processing including for bodily injury, employers’ liability, casualty claims, etc. and b) for underwriting life and annuity policies in the UK using our proprietary LDS platform, EXL developed curated datasets with insurance-specific tagging, labelling, and question-and-answer pair creation to fine-tune a LLM using our Nvidia-powered GenAI platform.”  

Aurora secures funding from QBE Ventures

Deal value: N/A

Date announced: 23 October 

The digital commercial insurance platform Aurora has secured seed funding from QBE Ventures, the investment arm of QBE.

The investment will be used to enhance Aurora’s lead algorithmic trading proposition, attempting to widen its product offering while allowing Aurora to commit to new commercial distribution partnerships. 

And finally …

• Aon has promoted Adam Neverton to global head of strategic broking for professions.
• Rohit Ghai has joined Premium Credit as chief risk officer.
• Broadstone has promoted Jeremy Clack to the newly created role of head of commercial strategy in its consulting & actuarial division.
• Liberty Specialty Markets, part of Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, has appointed Nikunj Mahida as head of third-party claims, UK & MENA.
• FMG has promoted Andy Chandler to the role of managing director.
• Law firm Kennedys has appointed Meg Catalano as the firm’s global managing partner.