Lloyd’s announced it is investing in Layr, a cloud-based commercial insurance platform for small businesses looking to purchase liability insurance.

The investment follows Layr’s successful trial in the Lloyd’s Lab, which gives InsurTech startups the opportunity to work with Lloyd’s market experts to develop their ideas as well as potential funding. Lloyd’s Lab last week welcomed a second cohort of 12 InsurTech startups.

Lloyd’s did not disclose the specific investment amount.

Layr, which is based in Atlanta, Ga., participated in the first cohort of the Lloyd’s Lab and used the opportunity to test its cloud-based product for providing faster access for small businesses. (The first cohort of Lloyd’s Lab was held from September to December last year.)

The Lloyd’s investment will help Layr further develop its product offering. Layr is also exploring potential distribution opportunities with several Lloyd’s syndicates.

The platform bypasses carriers’ application programming interfaces (APIs) and instead uses its proprietary price and appetite prediction engine to match business with the right policies from the right carrier at the right price, explained Lloyd’s in a statement. Lloyd’s said this allows Layr to provide indications for more lines of coverage across more industries in real time.

Unlike comparison engines or aggregators, the startup uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to compare an applicant against clusters of similar small businesses. Companies will find out not only the coverage they need and the best price to pay for it, but also what coverage similar businesses purchase.

Another success story from the first Lloyd’s Lab cohort came from Denver-based Parsyl, which is a supply chain data platform that combines low-cost sensing hardware and large-scale data mining to allow insurers to better anticipate risk and improve the claims process. In December, six Lloyd’s syndicates subscribed to use Parsyl’s Internet-of-Things product, offering crafted risk coverage for sensitive shipments.

On April 29, Lloyd’s Lab started working with a second cohort of 12 teams selected from more than 250 applicants. The 10-week program will run until July 3 when startups will have the opportunity to showcase their products to potential investors. The selected teams were chosen in a two-step competitive application process with the best 22 startups presenting their ideas to experts across the market during pitch day.

The current list of startups that will be working with the Lloyd’s innovation accelerator include technological and data-driven products designed to help better understand risks, make claim processes faster and facilitate wider access to insurance.

“Lloyd’s Lab provides us with an exceptional environment to test and accelerate the implementation of new technological [products and services],” said Lloyd’s CEO John Neal.

Source: Lloyd’s

*A version of this story appeared previously in our sister publication Insurance Journal.