Beazley came out with its new U.S. marine platform. Willis Towers Watson launched Igloo 5, an update to its financial modeling platform.

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Beazley has begun its new U.S. marine platform. The insurer’s initial focus will be on hull, protection & indemnity and liability coverage for the marine and marine construction/marine platform sectors.

Beazley has been an insurer of marine risks in the Lloyd’s market in London since 1999. The products offered in the U.S., which will be available on both an admitted and non-admitted basis, are designed to complement the large risk coverages available through Beazley’s London underwriters.

According to Stephen Vivian, head of Beazley’s US marine focus group, the company will target business that typically is placed in the U.S. domestic market and not by its London colleagues.

In the U.S., Beazley will be writing predominantly brown water hull risks, with limits of up to $5 million, and marine liability risks, on both a primary and excess basis, with limits of up to $25 million.

Beazley’s marine liability offering will include protection and indemnity, terminal/port operators, ship repairers’ liability, charterers, ancillary, contractual and excess liabilities.

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Willis Towers Watson has launched Igloo 5, an update to its financial modeling platform. Igloo 5 brings a number of key improvements including:

• Greatly improved model runtime
• Ready for use-based licensing and full implementation in the cloud
• Fully backwards compatible to support existing client models and investment
• Full 64-bit application to support models of any size and any number of simulations

WTW explained that Igloo’s property and casualty modeling platform Igloo supports an understanding of risk and provides the platform for regulatory and economic capital modeling in addition to a range of other applications including reinsurance purchasing, business planning and flexible business decision support.

Igloo 5 can be easily implemented locally or using cloud technology – or a combination of the two, said WTW in a statement.

When combined with the power of the cloud, implementation performance can now be greatly scaled up to meet short-term demand or reduced to minimum levels during off-peak periods, WTW said. The updated platform also offers a high level of compatibility with past versions of Igloo, enabling existing users to leverage many of the benefits of the new release without requiring any investment in re-working existing models.

Sources:: Beazley and Willis Towers Watson