Tel Aviv-based maritime risk analysis company Windward has appointed former BP CEO Lord Browne to its board.
The oil man invested in Windward in 2016 and has since been advising the company on strategy, including its push into London and the global marine insurance market.
"Such has been the impact of Lord Browne’s advice that Windward took the decision to invite him to join the company’s board," it said.
Browne told Windward staff: “Windward is a company I have admired for a long time: for its vision; for the way it collaborates with organisations to solve real-world problems; and for using its technology to make the world - and the oceans - safer.
"I look forward to working with Windward to help it succeed in becoming the benchmark for marine risk.”
Ami Daniel, Windward’s co-founder and CEO, added: “We’re delighted to welcome Lord Browne to our board of directors.
"That a man of his experience and expertise chose Windward is humbling, and a testament to our team’s success in marrying machine-learning with deep maritime domain expertise.
"We’re very much looking forward to working with Lord Browne more closely.”
Browne joined BP in 1966, rising to become CEO from 1995 to 2007.
Big-name backers
Windward was formed in 2010 and has raised $22.4m from investors including Aleph, Horizons Ventures, former CIA director David Petraeus, and Tom Glocer, the ex-CEO of Reuters.
Windward told TradeWinds in December that its artificial intelligence for accurately predicting vessel accidents is already a reality that can successfully spot risky ships and potentially help improve loss ratios for marine underwriters.
Over the past year, the Israeli company has built the “big data” capability to assess and rank the risk for every vessel in the world, which is about 180,000 relevant ships.
The concept has piqued some key interest.
Specialist insurance and reinsurance market Lloyd’s announced a pilot project last year with Windward and several marine insurers, including Talbot Underwriting, to look into the business impact of using the start-up’s smart-data analytics.
Lloyd’s says it sees potential for managing insured fleets of ships in terms of identifying risk beforehand and also for giving context for evaluating claims after a given event.
