Nick Maddalena Leads Windward’s Marine Insurance
Windward, the pioneering maritime risk analytics startup, today announced it had hired Nick Maddalena to head its marine insurance business.
With three decades’ experience as an underwriter and broker, Maddalena will accelerate Windward’s push into the marine insurance market and oversee the expansion of the company’s London office. He previously co-founded Lloyd’s coverholder, Seacurus, before selling the company to Barbican Insurance Group.
Speaking from Windward’s Tel-Aviv headquarters, Maddalena said: “I’m thrilled to be joining the team. I see the company’s risk selection and prediction tools as being enormously valuable and helpful to the marine insurance market. I am very impressed with Windward’s capabilities and the resources it’s committed.”
Ami Daniel, Windward Co-Founder and CEO, added: “Nick’s hiring is about choosing a leader who knows how to build and grow a business. His deep understanding of the marine insurance industry and his breadth of experience will help us expand and partner with more firms, to help them boost profitability in what continues to be a very challenging market.”
Windward Insurance improves and augments the underwriting process. The technology creates an operational profile for every vessel and fleet, continuously monitoring and analyzing what ships are doing, including: how they navigate; where they operate; when they operate; what they do in rough weather; and how they manoeuvre in ports. The company’s models use these vessel operating patterns and behavioral traits to apply a risk rating to every ship and fleet, and to predict the likelihood of a vessel having an accident in the year ahead. Windward’s proprietary data and machine learning algorithms can be integrated into insurers’ technical pricing models, leading to better underwriting decisions and improving profitability.
About Windward
Windward is a global leader in maritime risk analytics: it helps organizations, including marine insurers, governments and law enforcement, understand maritime risk, enabling them to take better actions to manage it. Based in Tel Aviv and London, Windward is backed by world-renowned investors, including XL Innovate, Aleph, Horizons Ventures, Marc Benioff and Lord Browne. To learn more, visit: https://windward.ai