quarterly-insurtech-briefing-q4-2017

Transaction Spotlight
Guidewire Acquisition of Cyence
How does Cyence enable its insurer clients to achieve premium growth and improve profitability?
We help insurers put cyber risk into dollars and probabilities to drive better underwriting, pricing and enterprise
risk management decisions. This framework allows for a meaningful discussion of cyber risk throughout an
insurance organization.
Our customers use our assessments to underwrite their small and large clients. We have built on-demand rating API’s
to power automated quoting portals and large account excess facilities utilize our analytics to communicate risk
among syndicates. Our findings are used to ask fewer underwriting questions, evaluate the credibility of questionnaire
responses and ask more targeted follow-up questions.
Product managers and actuaries leverage our economic risk analytics solution when examining and developing their
segment and pricing strategies. Enterprise risk managers leverage Cyence Risk Analytics’ exposure data and stochastic
disaster scenario models to evaluate and manage tail risks. Executives benefit from a common risk language that puts
exposures into dollars and probabilities and enables a data driven approach to strategic decisions.
Cyence also markets its solution to brokers, regulators and rating agencies. How do these
clients leverage Cyence’s cyber risk modeling capabilities? What benefits do they gain from
their Cyence subscription?
These organizations also have an interest in understanding cyber risk for a variety of use cases. Insurance brokers
provide value added services and consulting leveraging Cyence’s analytics helping their clients understand and
mitigate their own risk. Rating agencies leverage our analytics platform when evaluating the risk of their rated entities
and incorporate that into their credit risk analysis. Regulators use Cyence’s technology when examining insurer’s risk
during market conduct examinations and Lloyd’s leverages Cyence’s product when analyzing market exposure to
disaster scenarios.
Are you focused on, or have you identified any opportunities for future expansion outside of
Cyence’s core cyber risk modeling solution?
Guidewire will continue to look for new ways to apply Cyence Risk Analytics’ data listening technology. There is a new
initiative under Guidewire’s ownership of Cyence called Project Owl which was announced at the 2017 Connections
conference in Las Vegas. This research initiative looks to find valuable insurance problems where data science can be
helpful and build new solutions using Cyence’s data listening engine. Guidewire’s resources, customer base, and support
will enable Cyence to continue to develop worthwhile data science solutions for the insurance industry.
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