This week's moves include investment in specialist capacity at two insurers and a leadership succession at one of the established public entity markets.
Arbol has appointed Clement Atzberger (pictured, left) as chief scientist and set up an innovation unit under his leadership. The unit is intended to widen the range of climate risks the AI-focused insurer can price and write.
The unit will develop modeling, data and underwriting research to support Arbol's specialty lines, including agriculture, energy, wildfire and flood. Its initial focus is agriculture. There, Atzberger will work on models to support more weather and yield protection products that fill gaps in standard policies, or remove obstacles that businesses face in settling claims.
Atzberger has more than three decades of experience in remote sensing research. He was part of the team that produced TESSERA, a model that converts radar and optical satellite imagery into AI-ready data showing how land surfaces change over time, at 10-meter resolution worldwide. Arbol's climate data infrastructure provider, dClimate, has worked with Amazon Web Services to make TESSERA available more widely.
"Insurance demands more, because someone has to be willing to pay a claim on what the data says," Atzberger said, comparing industry modeling with academic research.
He said many of the risks Arbol writes are ones that other carriers decline, because the data available to them has never been good enough to price on. The unit's task, he said, is to keep improving the models and data so that more of those risks become writable.
New York-based Arbol began as a parametric weather risk platform and now operates in more than 15 countries. It raised a $60 million Series B round in 2024 and set up Lilypad Insurance, a homeowners carrier for coastal markets.
HDI Global has launched Global Healthcare Solutions, expanding its established German medical malpractice business into an international offering for healthcare providers and care organizations.
The unit combines specialist healthcare liability underwriting with HDI's international platform and local market capabilities. It is intended to serve a wider range of healthcare organizations across the healthcare value chain.
Colin Lavey (pictured, center) has been appointed head of Global Healthcare Solutions, effective September 1. He joined HDI Global nine years ago, and his roles have included director of liability for the UK and Ireland and, most recently, executive underwriter for automotive.
Mukadder Erdönmez, the HDI Global SE executive board member responsible for liability, cyber, motor and the US market, said healthcare organizations faced increasingly complex risks from demographic change, digitalization and new models of care. She said the launch supported HDI's Xcelerate29 growth strategy.
"Maintaining technical discipline as we grow will be essential to building sustainable partnerships and long-term success," Lavey said. He added that building a team close to brokers and clients would be a key priority.
Both moves add specialist capacity in lines where brokers often struggle to place risks.
For brokers with agricultural, energy and climate-exposed clients, Arbol's investment targets the gaps traditional cover leaves open. These include weather and yield risks that fall outside federal crop programs or standard property policies. Data-led products that pay on measured outcomes can also settle faster than traditional agricultural claims. However, brokers will need to explain basis risk to clients when payouts don't match actual losses. The test for Arbol is whether better data translates into more capacity and competitive pricing, not just more precise pricing for risks it already writes.
On the healthcare side, liability capacity remains limited in many markets as claims costs rise. HDI's international unit adds an option for brokers placing cover for hospitals, care groups and multinational healthcare organizations. HDI has not named its target countries, and the release does not say whether the US will be included. That will determine how relevant the unit is to US healthcare brokers.
Great American Insurance Group has promoted Paul Cunney (pictured, right) to divisional president, public sector. He succeeds Scott Rohr, who will retire in December after a 40-year career in insurance.
Cunney joined Great American in 2022 as divisional senior vice president of public sector. He has more than 30 years of industry experience, with a focus on the public entity market.
Public entity business has become one of the more difficult casualty segments to place, with law enforcement liability, abuse claims and large jury verdicts all putting pressure on municipal and school district programs. Cunney has been part of the division's leadership since 2022, which points to continuity of appetite at a market brokers rely on for public entity placements.
