AI-powered underwriting platform Federato is opening a Sydney office – its first outside North America – and has appointed Roland Slee as Regional VP for Asia-Pacific and Japan.

The move comes after more than 300 QBE underwriters and staff in the US moved in 2024 to Federato’s RiskOps platform, which uses a “federated” graph to bring all data into a single view.

The insurtech, founded in San Francisco in 2020, says the Asia-Pacific region lacks widespread use of AI solutions across the full policy life cycle.

It will initially focus on insurers and managing general agents writing commercial lines in Australia and New Zealand, and plans to expand to Singapore, Japan and South Korea.

Personal lines and embedded insurance are not part of the plan at present.

“The carriers and MGAs I’ve spoken with here are sophisticated, well-capitalised and eager to explore the improved business outcomes Federato’s AI-native platform has delivered in the rest of the world,” said Mr Slee, a former Guidewire Asia-Pacific MD who also spent nearly two decades at Oracle.

Federato says the region combines market maturity, sophisticated buyers and “a clear gap between what legacy core systems deliver and what carriers need. Australia’s top three carriers hold around 80% market share; Japan’s top three hold close to 90%. These are large, well-capitalised organisations that are actively looking for better solutions.”

Australia and New Zealand are highly regulated, professionally run markets with a strong appetite for effective technology, the insurtech says.

“QBE gave 30% of underwriting time back to its people and consolidated from 14 tools to one across four business units,” it added.