In an industry often seen as slow to change, Daniel Prince (pictured) believes the real opportunity in specialty underwriting lies not in disruption, but in disciplined transformation. With more than two decades of experience across underwriting, broking and operations, he now leads Augmented, a new venture aimed at making digital progress practical for complex risks.
Now, at Augmented, Prince is seeking to bring that same energy – empowerment, speed, and clarity – to the complexities of specialty risk. His career spans underwriting roles at Travelers, Zurich, Barbican and Hamilton, followed by a consulting-style interlude in broking and a leadership stint at Rethink MGA, which has since ceased operations. Out of that experience came a team and a platform built for the digital evolution of non-standard property and terrorism risk.
Prince's view of the market is both pragmatic and sharp. "There is no standard definition of non-standard construction," he said. "The more ambiguous the risk, the harder it is to automate."
Augmented is not trying to reinvent distribution or build a new marketplace. Instead, the team positions itself as a utility: helping brokers and carriers progress their digital journey using the tools Augmented has already built.
"Our goal is to make subjective risks more standard, not to take over underwriting but to speed up the right decisions," said Prince.
He believes the industry has underestimated just how costly underwriting non-standard property can be. In a market where only one in 10 submissions bind, inefficiency compounds. That's where data enrichment and AI-enabled triage come in.
"The value isn't in removing the human," he said. "It's in helping them look at 10 times as many risks, with better information."
Smart follow strategies, he argues, can bring further efficiency. "If the leader is doing their job well, follow capacity should be about trust and speed," said Prince. "You get the benefit of expertise without duplicating the effort."
Despite his company’s tech credentials, Prince is unequivocal about the continued need for human underwriters.
"You can ask AI to summarise a 100-page claims file," he said. "But only a human can read between the lines of a risk engineer's tone, or spot subtle contradictions in a submission."
This is particularly true for claims-heavy risks, where prior experience and a feel for client intent shape underwriting appetite more than any model.
"There’s still no substitute for speaking to a business owner and understanding how they think about risk," he said.
When it comes to AI governance, Prince believes the industry must keep things simple: underwriters should be able to explain how their tools work. "If it’s just a black box, you've lost control," he said.
Regulation, he adds, may soon force clarity on the industry. "What happens when a machine makes a mistake? Humans are forgiven. Machines aren't. That gap in tolerance could shape everything."
Despite two decades in the market, Prince remains wary of overhyping change. "Insurance always feels on the cusp of revolution," he said. "But progress is slow. There’s no open banking moment."
The culprit is unstructured, heterogeneous data. The solution is not just better tech, but better collaboration between experienced underwriters and detail-oriented engineers.
"Our techs ask a thousand questions to build the models," he said. "But the people with the answers are often the busiest and highest-paid. Getting their time is the biggest blocker to real transformation."
As Augmented expands into new lines, Prince remains focused on practical gains over grand disruption. For him, the key challenge isn't building technology, it's aligning experienced underwriters and data engineers to translate complex decisions into scalable tools.
"We don’t see it as a failure when a decision needs a human," he said. "We see that as part of making underwriting better, not replacing it."
