I am excited about the two new Cowbell Leadership Team (CLT) additions. First, in Rahul Hatkar, as our first VP and GM for India Technology Center, we found not just a competent leader to run our engineering operations in Pune but a cultural ambassador for what our culture is known for – Transparency, Resiliency, Urgency, and Empowerment (aka T.R.U.E. cultural framework). Second, with Simon Hughes, as our first VP and GM of the UK Operations, our leadership team is now augmented with exceptional leadership outside of the US in go-to-market, underwriting, and distribution.
The great Muhammad Ali once said – “The fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.” We have been working hard to augment our cyber risk pool, comprised of 95% of all US small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with an additional 5.5 million UK SMEs. After all, while four out of five US SMEs are under/uninsured, in the UK, the same is true for nine out of 10 SMEs. We are extending our data, AI models, and insurance expertise beyond geographic boundaries to perform superior risk assessment, modeling, and risk improvement, resulting in underwriting precision, scale in distribution, and profitability.
While a third of Cowbellers are in engineering, data science, and threat intelligence across three main hubs in US and Canada, our technology has outperformed the market in cyber risk selection, pricing, and modeling. Our reported claims ratio has been under 3% since the inception, and our policyholders’ risk improved by 9% compared to their industry peers within the first 12 months with Cowbell. The addition of a fourth engineering hub further fuels our multi-variate data sources and proprietary rating factors, keeping us on the path to further innovate cyber risk transfer beyond geographic boundaries.
Finally, the combination of economic profitability and the growth of free cash flows is paramount for growth at scale businesses in the current environment. While the UK go-to-market operations augment our growth aspirations, our new engineering operations in Pune further accelerate our profitability targets. Our mission to close the insurability gaps for SMEs is advancing by a giant step, and we are proud of our new additions.
