Halifax reinsurance platform Analyze Re acquired by New Jersey's Verisk Analytics

Halifax-based reinsurance risk analysis software provider Analyze Re has been acquired by Jersey City, New Jersey-based insurance, natural resources, and financial services data analytics provider Verisk Analytics, Inc. (Nasdaq:VRSK), folding it into the company’s risk modeller AIR Worldwide (AIR).
Analyze Re was founded in 2013 by co-founders Oliver Baltzer, Adrian Bentley and Shivam Rajdev, who were all ex-employees of Flagstone Reinsurance looking for new opportunities after Flagstone was acquired by Validus Holdings.
“We’re excited to join the Verisk Analytics family of businesses,” said Adrian Bentley, chief executive officer of Analyze Re. “Our team has been creating technology solutions for the insurance, reinsurance, and capital markets industries for more than a decade, turning huge volumes of data into meaningful insights in seconds. We look forward to continuing to offer these capabilities as part of AIR’s already robust product offerings.”
Analyze Re graduated from Dalhousie University’s Starting Lean program at the Norman Newman Centre for Entrepreneurship, where the company developed a platform to help reinsurers assess risk and provide pricing and portfolio optimization, a $500 billion per year market forecast to reach $2 trillion by 2025.
After their Dalhousie experience, the Analyze Re team was accepted to Halifax’s Volta Startup House, and then moved to Moncton’s Launch36 accelerator where it was one of two companies to receive a funding commitment from BDC Venture Capital.
“Clients are increasingly looking to track and reduce portfolio risk in real-time,” said Bill Churney, president of AIR Worldwide. “Analyze Re’s advanced analytics will complement our existing software solutions, enabling companies to manage their enterprise view of risk and perform multi-modeling and portfolio optimization, all within a single environment.”
Analyze Re’s Prime 2.0 platform is designed to find hidden profitability in the portfolios of reinsurers and insurance linked securities brokers by using a cloud-based approach to data analysis.
“Analyze Re and its high-performance technology will be a valuable addition to both AIR Worldwide and Verisk Analytics, and the complementary capabilities will enable a more competitive and complete service for our clients,” added Scott Stephenson, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Verisk Analytics.
In 2014, Analyze Re opened a London office, at the same time as Nova Scotia Business Inc., the provincial government’s business development agency, signed a six-year incentive agreement with Analyze Re, saving them up to $792,750 in payroll rebates from NSBI’s Strategic Investment Fund, as well as $10 million in salary, and provincial and personal income tax amounting to $1.15 million, in exchange for 50 jobs.
In 2013, Analyze Re raised $1.4 million in a financing round led by Innovacorp, with participation from BDC, Rho Ventures, and several outside investors with experience in the reinsurance industry.
Immediately after developing their prototype, the Analyze Re team had already signed non-disclosure agreements with five reinsurer clients, who then tested the system.
The reinsurance industry has grown in recent years, seeing increasingly widespread adoption in Latin America and Caribbean countries, as insurance companies seek to mitigate large obligations in the face of an increase in payouts related to environmental events such as floods by transferring portions of their risk portfolios across third-party institutions.