Business Moves: Hudson Insurance, iovation, Verisk, Understory

New York City-based Hudson Insurance Group announced the launch of its new Commercial Excess and Umbrella business. The new unit will provide coverage on a non-admitted basis in all 50 states.

Led by Thomas Farrell, the unit will operate on a limited brokerage basis that focuses on small, regional producers. Offering limits up to $5 million, Hudson’s target risk appetite includes Manufacturing, Contracting, Habitational, Hospitality, Lessors Risk and Transportation classes of business.

Farrell has more than 15 years experience in the commercial excess and umbrella market. He most recently served as regional vice president at Berkley Excess Managers, a W.R. Berkley Company. Prior to this, he led the northeast branch of Admiral Insurance Group’s Excess Division.

He is based in Stamford, Conn., and reports to Bill Schmidt, senior vice president, Hudson Insurance Group.

iovation, a provider of device-based solutions for authentication and fraud prevention, announced the acquisition of multifactor authentication company LaunchKey.

The acquisition of LaunchKey brings together three proven next-generation technologies—LaunchKey’s interactive multifactor authentication (MFA), iovation’s transparent device-based authentication and iovation’s global fraud database.

The move also marks the launch of the new iovation LaunchKey MFA solution, a flexible all-in-one toolkit that gives businesses the right authentication method for every touchpoint in their customer’s journey, including online, mobile, call center and in-person.

Verisk Insurance Solutions, a Verisk Analytics business, has launched a new energy insurance unit focused on transforming risk assessment, rating, and risk modeling for the oil and gas, petrochemicals, power generation, and metals and mining industries.

Drawingon domain expertise and proprietary data across Verisk businesses, including ISO, AIR Worldwide, and Wood Mackenzie, the unit will develop data analytics solutions available to the global property/casualty insurance industry.

Leading the new unit is Elizabeth Casas, who joined Verisk Insurance Solutions this year as managing director of energy and insurance.

Casas has significant experience in energy insurance and reinsurance in New York, Houston, London, Colombia, and Mexico, serving most recently as vice president and senior energy underwriter at Swiss Re Houston. She started her career as an engineer at Ecopetrol in Colombia.

Understory, Inc., a weather network and analytics company, announced the launch of its messaging platform designed to help insurance companies better engage with their policyholders regarding weather-related insurance claims. The new platform allows insurers to personalize communications with their policyholders with unique real-time, ground-level weather data – ensuring that claims are accurate and thus, decreasing the turnaround time on claims resolution.

Understory’s data is offered on an address-specific basis in cities where their RTi sensors are currently deployed. The geographic specificity of the Understory data is not available from any other weather data platform. The company continues to aggressively roll out additional cities, prioritizing those prone to severe weather.

Insurance companies are continuously seeking out innovative ways to provide high value communications to policyholders as part of their digital outreach. The Understory data-driven messaging platform can be integrated within insurers’ existing digital strategies via an easy-to-use API or deployed as a standalone app.

The data provides an accurate account of how conditions are affecting policyholders’ property as weather events unfold, making it easy for insurers to engage in higher-value interactions with policyholders in a way that is tailored to their unique needs and situations.