Canopius unveils algo platform Vave as an MGA to shake up Lloyd’s market

Canopius Group, the global specialty re/insurer, has unveiled Vave, the algorithmic underwriting platform it has hailed as “the future of Lloyd’s,” as a managing general agent (MGA).

Vave, which is led by Marek Shafer, Jamie Martin and Rob Porter, was devised and developed in-house and began trading in May 2019. Since then it has quoted for over 1.2 million risks, representing $2.2 billion of premium, with a growing US homeowners property and monoline flood portfolio.

As a digital platform with diverse capital, Canopius expects Vave to enjoy rapid growth, exceeding $100 million in premium by the end of the year. It will be launching a commercial property product later this year, Canopius addedHer lit.

Vave’s algorithmic pricing engine is connected via API to the largest brokers in the US surplus lines wholesale market, enabling them to quickly quote and bind risks on an automated basis. The platform is controlled by data-driven underwriting algorithms and, drawing on attributes from millions of lines of risk information, the team can validate the model and make improvements continually.

Shafer said: “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. 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, added: “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. 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.”