Gallagher Re Touts Advanced Integrated Reinsurance Analytics Platform
Global reinsurance broker Gallagher Re has unveiled an automated analytics platform it says benefits reinsurance clients and markets by bringing together all analytics capabilities into one platform and providing a multi-model view of risk.
The new platform, Gallagher Automated Insurance Analytics (GAIA), will “shave up to 80% off the time currently required to generate the same level of insights from interrogating multiple tools, separately,” according to the announcement.
The company said GAIA is faster and less cumbersome than legacy systems that can be costly to maintain and can’t keep up with the speed of technological change.
Gallagher Re said the system can adapt in line with its growth plans, allowing for easy expansion across geographies, lines of business and multiple business units.
The firm says the platform can generate “unique insights into underlying portfolios and lines of business through automated peer analysis, data quality scoring, portfolio optimisation and pricing tools.”
It can also rapidly translate data from catastrophe models and visualize all risks and portfolios. Clients can then refine their view of risk by making adjustments to modelled outputs, based on the GAIA framework.
“The big investments and rapid build outs of broker modelling capability witnessed at the turn of the century, represented only the first wave of reinsurance analytics power and potential,” Ed Messer, head of Analytics at Gallagher Re, said. “Value-added analytics consultancy, which goes far beyond the reinsurance transaction, is now an accepted and expected part of the client offering. But many of those legacy systems are today cumbersome and costly to maintain; they struggle to keep pace with the speed of technological change.”
GAIA offers three key tranches:
- Pre-Modelling: data collection, enrichment, augmentation and intelligence
- Modelling: automated, integrated workflows through multi-model APIs (application programming interfaces) and machine learning
- Post-Modelling: pricing, portfolio optimisation, e-placement and market insights
Tom Wakefield, CEO designate at Gallagher Re, said GAIA will take a “huge amount of inefficiency out of current reinsurance analytics practices” and that means more time spent advising clients.
Gallagher Re is owned by insurance broker Arthur J. Gallagher. It was founded in 2013 as the co-venture ‘Capsicum Re’ with Gallagher. mA year ago the business rebranded to Gallagher Re.
Gallagher Re is based out of several reinsurance hubs — in London, Bermuda, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Miami and New York. With the U.S. being the largest reinsurance market globally, accounting for 60% of total reinsurance premium, Gallagher Re said it plans significant expansion of its U.S. presence.
In August, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. agreed to acquire the treaty reinsurance brokerage operations of Willis Towers Watson, just weeks after a previous Gallagher deal to buy Willis Re fell through when brokers Aon and Willis terminated their $30 billion mega-merger agreement.
Under the new agreement, Gallagher will acquire the combined operations for an initial gross consideration of $3.25 billion, and potential additional consideration of $750 million subject to certain third-year revenue targets. In the previous deal, Gallagher had agreed to buy Willis Re and other assets for about $3.6 billion.
The operations being acquired by Gallagher include all of Willis Re’s treaty reinsurance brokerage operations. Willis Re’s treaty reinsurance business operates in 24 countries, places over $10 billion of premium annually and represents more than 750 insurance and reinsurance company clients.
“Broadening our reinsurance brokerage offerings has been a strategic objective at Gallagher and this acquisition will significantly enhance our global value proposition,” said J. Patrick Gallagher, Jr., chairman, president and CEO.