Startup of the month: Windward

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This month we look at one of the few startups tackling marine insurance: Windward.

Founded in 2011 by two former Israeli Naval officers, Windward is a Tel Aviv based InsurTech working at the intersection of cyber security and marine insurance, and with $30 billion of gross written premiums underwritten by marine insurers every year the opportunity for Windward to bring new technologies to bear on this segment is significant.

At its core, Windward’s technology analyses 1,500 different variables from commerical shipping fleets to better enable insurer to assess the projected risk of vessels and fleets in real time, as opposed to the traditional approach that assesses risk according to the value of a ship’s contents, route risk and previous claim data.

Windward parses data from two sources; the first is location data that monitors if a ship is exposed to any operational risk in real time. Prior to the arrival of risk data, the primary risk factors for marine insurance were the size and weight of a ship, the value of the cargo, and its planned route. Now, additional data collected in real-time will reveal whether a ship is being operated in an erratic way, cutting through the separation zone, or even sailing against the traffic in shipping lanes.

The second is modelling global weather patterns in a given region or zone including prevailing tides, visibility, fog, waves (height, direction, max wave height), wind (speed, direction, max gust speed), currents, moonlight. Using this weather data, in addition to sailing patterns and past claims, WindWard assigns each fleet with an operational profile a score from 1-5: the higher the score, the greater the risk.

Windward is a rare example of a marine InsurTech that has applied machine learning techniques to an often overlooked sector of insurance, and its recent $16.5 million investment from XL Innovate will accelerate its pursuit of real time coverage for both mariners and commercial shipping.