STARTUPS LIVE! And the winner is…

A company that detects rain, hail and wind directly at the Earth’s surface was voted as the best start-up after pitching to judges and the audience at the Global Reinsurance Innovation & Insurtech conference in Bermuda this afternoon.

Understory, run by CEO Alex Kubicek, was one of five start-ups that were invited to pitch their business to the conference. He wins a meeting with representatives of New York-based Two Sigma IQ, an investment management firm.

One of the panel of judges, Dermot O’Donohoe, CEO Hamilton at Lloyds, said of all the start-ups: “It is great to see tangible examples where people can harness data and add benefit. It is adding value to the insurance offering.”

The other start-up pitches were given by: Will Dove, chairman and CEO of !Re; Satadru Sengupta, general manager and data scientist – insurance, with Data Robot; Max Drucker, CEO Carpe Data and Bob Frady, CEO of HazardHub.

After the presentation, Mr Kubicek said: “I met recently with people from the Bermuda Business Development Agency and they pitched this conference to me.

“We are in the middle of a rapid expansion, so we thought this was a great opportunity for us. We firmly believe it is not just the data we supply but what we can do with it. Working with insurers, we can combine our data set with their data set.”