Lloyd’s of London is set to invest in artificial intelligence-powered commercial insurance provider Layr, after a successful trial at the Lloyd’s Lab.
Image: Lloyd’s of London headquarters in London. Photo: Courtesy of Lloyd’s of London.
Layr is an Atlanta, Georgia-based insurance provider for small businesses which seek to buy liability insurance. The insurtech participated in the first cohort of the Lloyd’s Lab and used the opportunity to test its cloud-based solution.
The investment from Lloyd’s will help Layr to further develop its solution. Furthermore, the insurtech is exploring potential distribution with several of Lloyd’s syndicates.
Layr’s platform claims to bypass carriers’ APIs and instead uses its own price and demand prediction engine to match business with the right policies from the right carrier at the right price.
Using the platform, Layr can provide indications for more lines of coverage across more industries in real-time.
Layr has deployed artificial intelligence and machine learning to compare an applicant against clusters of similar small businesses.
Through the platform, businesses can not only find out the coverage they need, but also the best price that they will pay for it and also the coverage that similar businesses purchase.
Lloyd’s said that the investment in the insurtech follows its new strategy, which includes the development of more comprehensive cover, offering high quality protection, making it simpler to access insurance products and services and lowering the costs of doing business at Lloyd’s.
Lloyd’s of London CEO John Neal said: “Lloyd’s Lab provides us with an exceptional environment to test and accelerate the implementation of new technological solutions.
“I am delighted that syndicates have teamed up with Parsyl and Lloyd’s itself has invested in Layr following the Lab’s first cohort, and I am looking forward to seeing what solutions emerge from the second cohort.”
Layr CEO Phillip Naples said: “Modern business owners do everything online, so Layr is the natural evolution for small business insurance.
“We feel validated that the world’s oldest and most respected insurance marketplace agrees and recognises that the technology we’re creating is the future of small commercial distribution.”