InsurTech Reask, a leading science and technology company focusing on natural hazard modelling, announces it has closed its seed funding round, led by Tencent, the global technology giant headquartered in China. The funding will support the next stage of Reask’s product development, operational expansion, and business development worldwide, including the London Market.
Reask is taking on legacy Nat Cat modelling firms by fundamentally rethinking how catastrophe models are created, offering real-time, post event, and longer-term probabilistic risk forecasting solutions for global weather-related catastrophes, which leverage the power of artificial intelligence (AI).
At present, Nat Cat risk modelling is based on historical data, which risks being outdated, incomplete, or inaccurate. Instead, insurers need to leverage modelling solutions that incorporate current and potential future changes to our climate. Only then can they have confidence in the accuracy of their risk modelling and pricing moving forward.
Reask is on a mission to be the leading provider of next-generation Nat Cat modelling, worldwide. We are already gaining great traction in the market with our unique AI-based solutions, and are thrilled that our high-profile investors have recognised this with their investments supporting the next stage of our growth strategy.
There are three key purposes for the funding: technical – building out our science and AI teams to continue to expand our model range; sales and marketing – enhancing our business development and account management team; and operations – strengthening our internal capabilities to help build our business.
Thomas Loridan, CEO and Co-Founder of Reask
The funding round is also supported by SV Angel, a major San Francisco-based seed fund and early investor in Google, Twitter, and Airbnb, and by Hawktail, an early-stage US-based venture fund. It follows increasing traction by Reask with leading clients such as Swiss Re, AXA and ILS firms including Twelve Capital and Securis Investment Partners.
Artificial intelligence will be a critical tool to help humanity more accurately predict climate patterns and risks in the near future. In a dynamically-changing world, our forecasting tools must become more sophisticated. Reask has built a suite of products leveraging their climate forecasting engine for the insurance industry that are helping insurance companies accelerate the development of their climate-related offerings.
The insurance industry will play an increasingly critical role in helping economies adjust and mitigate risks from climate-driven catastrophic events. We believe Reask is well positioned to partner and grow with the global insurance industry.
David Wallerstein, Chief Exploration Officer, Tencent
Reask’s suite of Nat Cat modelling solutions are built with explicit connection to changing global climate conditions, using AI from the ground up. They are also comprehensively global. By contrast, other existing solutions tend to rely on statistical extrapolation of historical records and have important gaps in coverage. As a result, they lack the accuracy needed for re-insurers to optimise their assessment and pricing of risk given the rapid pace and global impact of climate change.
Source: Reask
