XL Catlin signs California deal with Bamboo

XL Catlin and new insuretech-focused program administrator, Bamboo Insurance have signed an underwriting agreement to provide Californian property insurance.

Commenting on the Bamboo partnership, John Welch, chief executive, Reinsurance North America, said “XL Catlin has a long history of identifying high quality specialised program administrators that address market needs and benefit from our underwriting expertise and strong capital position. We are very excited about adding the Bamboo team to this list.”

“Bamboo has the right combination of deep market knowledge, an accomplished team of professionals across all disciplines, leading technology skills and strong relationships with their producers,” said Welch. “In addition, we believe the timing is right to bring a fresh approach and new capacity to the California insurance market. We look forward to working with Bamboo.”

“As the industry has evolved over the years, I wanted to build a reimagined insurance company that balances the core tenets of product manufacturing with insure-tech driven changes to the operating platform,” commented Bamboo chief executive officer John Chu. “We wanted Bamboo to embrace all the new technology driven advancements but apply them to drive profitable growth through machine driven underwriting and a significantly lower cost platform.”

“I wanted to create a company that centred on transparency and advocacy, two key differentiators in the P&C market that have largely not been part of the industry,” said Chu. “I believe that the end to end experience customers and agents have had with P&C companies is not friendly and borders on adversarial. We believe that must change and outdated processes and systems have been the driving force for these issues, something that our team and Bamboo is not burdened with.”