Q&A with Alastair Speare-Cole, President of Insurance at QOMPLX

Alastair Speare-Cole, President and General Manager of the Insurance Division at QOMPLX, leads the overall strategy for the business unit, the development of QOMPLX’s underwriting-as-a-service platform, the management of the company’s Managing General Agent (MGA), as well as setting the direction for the company’s next-generation insurance decision platform that leverages a wide variety of data and advanced analytics to provide advanced risk and portfolio management solutions. Prior to joining QOMPLX, he served as Chief Underwriting Officer at Qatar, and he served as the CEO of JLT Towers from 2012 to 2015. He was also COO at Aon Re for ten years and has also held board appointments at reinsurance and banking subsidiaries in the United Kingdom.

Over the span of my career, I have seen this industry move from crude and manual deterministic models to stochastic models, SAAS actuarial tools, catastrophe modeling, and entity-level capital modeling.



MEDIA 7: Can you please tell us a little bit about yourself and your professional career?
ALASTAIR SPEARE-COLE:
I have spent much of my career involved in reinsurance where portfolios of risk are analyzed and traded. Over the span of my career, I have seen this industry move from crude and manual deterministic models to stochastic models, SAAS actuarial tools, catastrophe modeling, and entity-level capital modeling. And so, my career has shadowed this trajectory. Especially in the eighties, when I was involved in designing and building some of the early models.


M7: QOMPLX has recently partnered with COMBUS. What does this partnership bring to the table?
ASC:
I have long been a fan of COMBUS and Will Gardner, whom I have worked with in the past. The insurance industry has become reliant on too few dominant models. Models as we have seen in recent months over COVID-19 approximate reality but are always just that, an approximation. And it should be no surprise that their limitations show differences between what is predicted and what actually happens. One strategy to combat this is to have multiple ways of modeling the same thing. The insight gained from different views is key to developing a better understanding. The success of COMBUS and other independent modeling companies is vital to creating a diversity of views and our aim is to try to make them more easily accessible and integrable into insurers’ and reinsurers’ platforms.


Models as we have seen in recent months over COVID-19 approximate reality but are always just that, an approximation. And it should be no surprise that their limitations show differences between what is predicted and what actually happens.



M7: How do QOMPLX’s Insurance products help businesses overcome the problems in the insurance value chain?
ASC:
There has been an arms race going on within the insurance industry around gathering and using data for risk selection, risk pricing, and getting clients through the front door. Everyone wants faster insight and the ability to make faster decisions. Our concept is to provide people with a Lego kit of enterprise-grade software that will help them link everything together- from ingestion, organization, storage, and analysis for structured and unstructured data, co-integrated with insurance-specific workflow solutions built on a common underlying data fabric to delivering an edge in decision making, risk selection, and loss control.


M7: What are some of the challenges in risk management in the post-COVID-19 era?
ASC:
Business interruption has been an increasing concern for all risk managers, not just those who worry about the ‘just-in-time’ process and supply chain. COVID-19 has demonstrated that the business interruption coverage offered by insurers is often poorly constructed, not tailored to a world where intangible assets are as valuable as tangible and where there are some risks that are so systemic that only governments can cope with the accumulation of tail risk.


There has been an arms race going on within the insurance industry around gathering and using data for risk selection, risk pricing, and getting clients through the front door. Everyone wants faster insight and the ability to make faster decisions.



M7: What do you see as the future of InsurTech? How is QOMPLX contributing to its growth?
ASC:
There is a huge wave of investment in InsurTech. Whilst the ideas these startups encapsulate may inspire permanent evolution of insurance, as individual businesses many will fail. Tackling a small slice on an insured’s risk, however originally done, is not going to work if the results in insured having to buy dozens of niche products that still leave gaps. Insurers will not continue to support InsurTechs that cannot build scale and scaling means distribution which is expensive. And most InsurTechs like to build their own software when they could adapt off-the-shelf products. And this means that much of their seed money goes on this which is inessential, rather than distribution which is crucial. We are looking hard at ways of working with other partners to allow people who have a great idea to take it to market, rather than trying to build a standalone business which may saddle the idea with costs that it cannot afford.


M7: What is the best advice you’ve received?
ASC:
I think it is encapsulated by Kipling’s poem “If.”

ABOUT QOMPLX

QOMPLX helps organizations make intelligent business decisions and better manage risk through our advanced, proprietary risk cloud. We are the leaders at rapidly ingesting, transforming, and contextualizing large, complex, and disparate data sources through our cloud-native data factory in order to help organizations better quantify, model, and predict risk. Our specialized experts and technology solutions in cybersecurity, insurance, and finance power leading global corporations and mission-critical public sector agencies.

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SingleStore | January 25, 2024

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SingleStore has announced support for vector search using Approximate Nearest Neighbor (ANN) vector indexing algorithms, leading to 800-1,000x faster vector search performance than precise methods (KNN). With both full-text and indexed vector search capabilities, SingleStore offers developers true hybrid search that takes advantage of the full power of SQL for queries, joins, filters and aggregations. These capabilities firmly place SingleStore above vector-only databases that require niche query languages and are not designed to meet enterprise security and resiliency needs. Free shared tier. SingleStore has announced a new cloud-based Free Shared Tier that’s designed for startups and developers to quickly bring their ideas to life — without the need to commit to a paid plan. On-demand compute service for GPUs and CPUs. SingleStore announces a compute service that works alongside SingleStore’s native Notebooks to let developers spin up GPUs and CPUs to run database-adjacent workloads including data preparation, ETL, third-party native application frameworks, etc. This capability brings compute to algorithms, rather than the other way around, enabling developers to build highly performant AI applications safely and securely using SingleStore — without unnecessary data movement. New CDC capabilities for data ingest and egress. To ease the burden and costs of moving data in and out of SingleStore, SingleStore is adding native capabilities for real-time Change Data Capture (CDC) in for MongoDB®, MySQL and ingestion from Apache Iceberg without requiring other third party CDC tools. SingleStore will also support CDC out capabilities that ease migrations and enable the use of SingleStore as a source for other applications and databases like data warehouses and lakehouses. SingleStore Kai™. Now generally available, and ready for both analytical and transactional processing for apps originally built on MongoDB. Announced in public preview in early 2023, SingleStore Kai is an API to deliver over 100x faster analytics on MongoDB® with no query changes or data transformations required. Today, SingleStore Kai supports BSON data format natively, has improved transactional performance, increased performance for arrays and offers industry-leading compatibility with MongoDB query language. Projections: To further advance as the world’s fastest HTAP database, SingleStore has added Projections. Projections allow developers to greatly speed up range filters and group by operations by introducing secondary sort and shard keys. Query performance improvements range from 2-3x or more, depending on the size of the table. With this latest release, SingleStore becomes the industry’s first and only real-time data platform designed for all applications, analytics and AI. SingleStore supports high-throughput ingest performance, ACID transactions and low-latency analytics; and structured, semi-structured (JSON, BSON, text) and unstructured data (vector embeddings of audio, video, images, PDFs, etc.). Finally, SingleStore’s data platform is designed not just with developers in mind, but also ML engineers, data engineers and data scientists. “Our new features and capabilities advance SingleStore’s mission of offering a real-time data platform for the next wave of gen AI and data applications,” said Nadeem Asghar, SVP, Product Management + Strategy at SingleStore. “New features, including vector search, Projections, Apache Iceberg, Scheduled Notebooks, autoscaling, GPU compute services, SingleStore Kai™, and the Free Shared Tier allow startups — as well as global enterprises — to quickly build and scale enterprise-grade real-time AI applications. We make data integration with third-party databases easy with both CDC in and CDC out support.” "Although generative AI, LLM, and vector search capabilities are early stage, they promise to deliver a richer data experience with translytical architecture," states the 2023 report, “Translytical Architecture 2.0 Evolves To Support Distributed, Multimodel, And AI Capabilities,” authored by Noel Yuhanna, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. "Generative AI and LLM can help democratize data through natural language query (NLQ), offering a ChatGPT-like interface. Also, vector storage and index can be leveraged to perform similarity searches to support data intelligence." SingleStore has been on a fast track leading innovation around generative AI. The company’s product evolution has been accompanied by high-momentum growth in customers and surpassing $100M in ARR late last year. SingleStore also recently ranked #2 in the emerging category of vector databases, and was recognized by TrustRadius as a top vector database in 2023. Finally, SingleStore was a winner of InfoWorld’s Technology of the year in the database category. To learn more about SingleStore visit here. About SingleStore SingleStore empowers the world’s leading organizations to build and scale modern applications using the only database that allows you to transact, analyze and contextualize data in real time. With streaming data ingestion, support for both transactions and analytics, horizontal scalability and hybrid vector search capabilities, SingleStore helps deliver 10-100x better performance at 1/3 the costs compared to legacy architectures. Hundreds of customers worldwide — including Fortune 500 companies and global data leaders — use SingleStore to power real-time applications and analytics. Learn more at singlestore.com. Follow us @SingleStoreDB on Twitter or visit www.singlestore.com.

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Business Strategy

Devo Security Data Platform Attains FedRAMP Authorization

Devo | January 09, 2024

Devo Technology, the security data analytics company, today announced that the Devo Security Data Platform received Authorization to Operate (ATO) at the Moderate level under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). The Devo Security Data Platform successfully completed FedRAMP's rigorous accreditation process, enabling federal agencies to secure their environments with a market-leading security information and event management (SIEM). Agencies and their partners can now leverage Devo to solve their toughest IT and security challenges with unparalleled visibility and a unified view of risk posture, security operations and the threat landscape. The demand to keep pace with rapidly evolving cyber threats at cloud speed and scale has never been higher for the U.S. government. New Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regulations require federal agencies to collect and retain logs for long time periods. These requirements strain legacy SIEM and logging solutions, resulting in higher license and maintenance costs and slower query times. The Devo Security Data Platform's massive ingestion capabilities overcome these challenges and enable agencies to manage petabytes of data—from any device or application—cost-effectively and performantly in the cloud. Kayla Williams, CISO, Devo, said: "Devo relentlessly maintains the highest standards of internal security controls to ensure customers can protect themselves from security threats with peace of mind. Commercial customers have used the Devo Security Data Platform in the cloud for years, and this milestone enables us to continue to extend the same seamless experience to federal agencies and their partners." The Small Business Administration sponsored Devo's authorization. FedRAMP was established to provide a cost-effective, risk-based approach for the adoption and use of cloud services by the federal government. FedRAMP empowers agencies to use modern cloud technologies with an emphasis on the security and protection of federal information. The Devo Security Data Platform is also available in the AWS GovCloud Marketplace, an isolated AWS Region designed to host sensitive data and regulated workloads in the cloud, assisting customers with U.S. federal, state and local government compliance requirements. About Devo Devo unleashes the power of the SOC. The Devo Security Data Platform, powered by our HyperStream technology, is purpose-built to provide the speed and scale, real-time analytics, and actionable intelligence global enterprises need to defend expanding attack surfaces. An ally in keeping your organization secure, Devo combines the power of people and AI to augment security teams, leading to better insights and faster outcomes. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with operations in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, Devo is backed by Insight Partners, Georgian, TCV, General Atlantic, Bessemer Venture Partners, Kibo Ventures and Eurazeo. Learn more at www.devo.com.

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Big Data Management

Dremio Partners With Carahsoft to Bring Modern Data Infrastructure to the Public Sector

Dremio | January 05, 2024

Dremio, the easy and open data lakehouse, and Carahsoft Technology Corp., The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider, today announced a partnership. Under the agreement, Carahsoft will serve as Dremio’s Master Government Aggregator®, making the company’s complete cloud and software portfolio for Government, Defense, Intelligence and Education available through Carahsoft’s reseller partners and NASA Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V, Information Technology Enterprise Solutions – Software 2 (ITES-SW2), National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) ValuePoint, National Cooperative Purchasing Alliance (NCPA) and OMNIA Partners contracts. This collaboration paves the way for Public Sector organizations to harness cutting-edge data analytics capabilities which empower them to make smarter decisions and significantly enhance operational efficiency through lightning-fast data access. Dremio propels agencies into the future by embracing a state-of-the-art data lakehouse architecture in Public Sector organizations. By transitioning to Dremio's solutions, organizations can enjoy sub-second query performance and a remarkable 10-fold improvement in price performance. The new environment eliminates costly and complex legacy data lake solutions and implements a flexible, highly modern architecture. Dremio provides cost-effective self-service analytics and data management, simplifying data pipelines and ETL complexity while accelerating insights across diverse storage locations. With a proven track record of modernizing legacy Hadoop environments and implementing the modern data lakehouse solution, Dremio and Carahsoft aim to transform Public Sector data management by breaking down data silos. Embracing a data mesh concept enables efficient handling of various data sources, fostering cross- collaboration and decentralized data control. Dremio’s expertise supports Public Sector agencies in implementing these principles, eradicating data silos for a more collaborative and efficient approach to data analytics. "Public sector organizations face a range of data infrastructure challenges, many of which are common to both Government and non-government entities. These issues often hinder effective data management, analysis, and decision-making,” said Roger Frey, Vice President of Alliances at Dremio. “Dremio's mission is to make data easily accessible and analyzable for all users, regardless of where it resides. We are excited to partner with Carahsoft to bring our state-of-the-art data analytics solutions to the Public Sector." “Within the Public Sector’s intricate data landscape, complexities often impede efficient data management and decision making,” said Laura Howton, Sales Director who leads the Analytics and Data Management Team at Carahsoft. “By adding Dremio to our AI and Machine Learning portfolio, our reseller partners can now provide modern, cost-effective and easily accessible data analytics tools to Government customers, bolstering their modernization efforts.” Dremio’s solutions are available through Carahsoft’s SEWP V contracts NNG15SC03B and NNG15SC27B, ITES-SW2 Contract W52P1J-20-D-0042, NASPO ValuePoint Master Agreement #AR2472, NCPA Contract NCPA01-86 and OMNIA Partners Contract #R191902. For more information, contact the Carahsoft team at 571-591-6430 or Dremio@carahsoft.com; or register for a complimentary webcast, “The Key Steps in Decreasing Costs and Improving Performance Through Data Lake Modernization,” Thursday, January 25, at 2p.m. About Dremio Dremio is the easy and open data lakehouse, providing self-service analytics with data warehouse functionality and data lake flexibility across all of your data. Use Dremio's lightning-fast SQL query service and any other processing engine on the same data. Dremio increases agility with a revolutionary data-as-code approach that enables Git-like data experimentation, version control, and governance. In addition, Dremio eliminates data silos by enabling queries across data lakes, databases, and data warehouses, and by simplifying ingestion into the lakehouse. Dremio's fully managed service helps organizations get started with analytics in minutes, and automatically optimizes data for every workload. As the original creator of Apache Arrow and committed to Arrow and Iceberg’s community-driven standards, Dremio is on a mission to reinvent SQL for data lakes and meet customers where they are on their lakehouse journey.

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QOMPLX helps organizations make intelligent business decisions and better manage risk through our advanced, proprietary risk cloud. We are the leaders at rapidly ingesting, transforming, and contextualizing large, complex, and disparate data sources through our cloud-native data factory in order to ...

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