reThought Flood Gains Investment, Agrees Acquisition Deal

reThought Flood, the technology-centric underwriting agency focused on US flood risk, announces two major business developments.

• reThought has completed an agreement to acquire CyberBoxer, bringing in-house its experts in data science, modeling, artificial intelligence, and underwriting.
• reThought has received a $1 million investment by the ClimateTech Fund of Connecticut Innovations, the state’s strategic venture capital arm.

reThought has partnered successfully with CyberBoxer OÜ (Estonia) and CyberBoxer Pvt. Ltd. (India) since the CyberBoxer Group’s inception in 2017, benefiting from the insurTech’s unique blend of expertise in data science, technology, underwriting, and catastrophe modeling. reThought has retained all CyberBoxer employees, which establishes the flood specialist as a multinational insurance group now comprising reThought Insurance OÜ and reThought Insurance Pvt Ltd. Terms of the deal are undisclosed.

“This is a valuable addition to reThought,” says Cory Isaacson, reThought Flood Chief Executive and former Chief Technical Officer at RMS. “We will not be entering the cyber insurance space. Instead we will capitalize on CyberBoxer’s expertise in cat modelling, data science, underwriting, and AI. reThought carries out complex analytics and modelling for every individual risk we underwrite, so bringing their services in-house improves our efficiency for our brokers and customers. It also gives us an active presence in major markets, including the EU, where we may one day look to extend our business.”

CyberBoxer founder Amit Rai says: “Most insurTechs change directions multiple times as they evolve to find a market niche where their technology and skills add genuine value. When we launched CyberBoxer, we intended to use our platform to support cyber underwriters. But when we began working with reThought, and applied our capabilities and expertise to flood risk, we found they formed the basis for an ideal
partnership.”

INVESTMENT

Separately, Connecticut Innovations (CI), the state’s strategic venture capital arm, has made an investment of $1 million in reThought Flood through its ClimateTech Fund. The money will be used for continued expansion of the business.

“We chose to invest in reThought Flood for a couple key reasons,” says Konstantine Drakonakis, Managing Venture Partner for the Climate Tech Fund at Connecticut Innovations. “First, flood has become one of the leading reasons for financial arising from of climate-change-driven weather events. Second, we believe in the reThought team and their track record as experts at catastrophe risk modeling, underwriting, and brokerage experience. They’re committed to applying technology-centric problem-solving to the flood insurance market, and we’re delighted to join with other investors we trust, including IA Capital and HSCM.”