QBE Insurance Group Limited (QBE) announces today that QBE Ventures has closed its first investment into RiskGenius, a machine learning company helping carriers, brokers and regulators analyze policy and endorsement language and aid in product development.

Additionally, QBE has entered into a multi-year commercial use agreement for the RiskGenius product. QBE North America will be the first division to implement the RiskGenius platform with plans already in place to upload over 125,000 policy documents into RiskGenius in 2018.

Bob James, Group Head of Transformation for QBE, said "Earlier this year we announced plans to invest US$50 million partnering with early-stage companies that have developed technology that could be put to work within QBE. I'm delighted that RiskGenius is the first partnership under this program.

"QBE North America completed a proof-of-concept of the RiskGenius platform earlier this year and saw great results leveraging the company's proprietary machine learning platform to compare policies as part of our product development process. We also see Risk Genius helping our company's underwriters best match policy language to meet the needs of our customers and their changing exposures. The RiskGenius product will provide a platform for building better products and better meeting our customers' needs. We've now signed a multi-year commercial agreement and plan on implementing the RiskGenius platform across all our business units in North America during the first half of 2018.

"Initially, we will be using the RiskGenius platform to analyze policy and endorsement language as well as to aid our teams in new product development. We expect the platform to improve our speed-to-market for new products as well as deliver new insights into our policies and streamline the policy review process. Over time the benefits to QBE will only increase as RiskGenius further enhances its proprietary machine learning platform and overall product capabilities."

Commenting on the decision to partner with QBE, Chris Cheatham, CEO of RiskGenius, said: "The RiskGenius team chose to partner with QBE because we believed in its people and its mission. The QBE people are passionate about insurance and they are hungry for new solutions. I love the fact that QBE has decided to focus on data and analytics when partnering with Insurtechs. The two parties are aligned in our vision for RiskGenius to become a utility, a standard, for insurance professionals looking to evaluate insurance policy language. That's exciting."

About QBE

QBE Insurance Group Limited is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, is one of the top 20 global insurance and reinsurance companies as measured by net earned premium and has operations in 37 countries.

About QBE Ventures

QBE Ventures is the venture capital arm of QBE Insurance Group, a top 20 global insurance and reinsurance company operating in 37 countries. QBE Ventures invests globally in companies that provide access to differentiated technology which has the potential to enhance QBE's business model, drive efficiencies and develop new avenues of growth.

About RiskGenius

RiskGenius is on a mission to organize the world's insurance policy information. Founded in 2015, RiskGenius applies machine learning to insurance policies to create structured content. RiskGenius customers leverage the platform to find and analyze insurance policy language and create more efficient underwriting workflows. RiskGenius was selected as the 2107 Entrepreneur of the Year by the Entrepreneurial Insurance Alliance.