Specialty re/insurer Canopius Group has announced the launch of its algorithmic underwriting platform, Vave, as an MGA.
Developed in-house, Vave began trading in May 2019, and has since quoted on over 1.2 million risks, representing $2.2 billion of premium.
Vave MGA is forecast to exceed $100 million premium by the end of this year, and Canopius expects to see rapid growth beyond this point.
The MGA is led by Marek Shafer, Jamie Martin and Rob Porter.
With a growing US homeowners property and monoline flood portfolio, Vave will be launching a commercial property product later this year.
The platform is controlled by data-driven underwriting algorithms and draws on attributes from millions of lines of risk information.
“Vave’s vast potential was evident very early on and as an MGA it can access the capital required to really set it loose in terms of scale and sophistication,” said Shafer.
“It is hyper efficient for brokers and, with greatly reduced frictional costs, highly effective from a capacity perspective. Vave is not a delegated authority play, in fact it is arguably the opposite as it is bringing the underwriting back to London.”
Mike Duffy, Chief Underwriting Officer at Canopius, also commented: “Vave is a fresh approach to insuring high-volume risk, bringing clarity and efficiency to risk portfolio management. Vave was created as this is exactly the kind of innovation Lloyd’s requires from the market.”
“After three years of development and a highly successful year of trading, we believe Vave is the future of Lloyd’s,” Duffy continued. “By reducing costs and improving data accuracy through its digital processes, Vave is already demonstrating some of the market’s key ambitions outlined in Blueprint Two.”
