Reinsurance News spoke with Oak Global Founder and CEO Cathal Carr around RVS 2026 in Monte Carlo, with the discussion focusing on how the reinsurance business is using the Lloyd’s market, technology and artificial intelligence to support its growth strategy.
Oak Global is a Lloyd’s-focused reinsurance business operating through two syndicates, with Carr saying the company expects to write approximately $950 million of income in 2026. He added that it is a “testament to the hard work and talent on our team, but also very much a testament to the Lloyd’s framework.”
Carr said Oak Global’s experience during its first two years had demonstrated the continued strength of demand for Lloyd’s among international clients. “Clients globally are engaging with the value proposition from the Lloyd’s market, both in terms of the risk expertise that comes from Lloyd’s, but also critically, the very strong ratings that are associated with that capital, and that’s something that we’re very pleased to be part of.”
For Oak Global, Carr said the next stage of distribution will involve continued innovation in how risk is connected with capital, an area where he believes Lloyd’s has historically played an important role.
“As we think about the last 300 plus years, both in terms of innovation from a product development perspective, but also in terms of matching capital with that risk. That’s something we’re very proud to be a part of and adding value in that ecosystem.”
Technology is another central part of Oak Global’s strategy. The company has established ROOT Intelligence, a technology business owned by Oak Global and based in Dublin’s Trinity College Innovation Hub, with a mandate to develop OCEAN, its risk orchestration platform.
“We do believe that the most recent advancements in technology and particularly AI will have a profound impact on our industry and has the opportunity to create significant value in terms of how we manage risk and how we create new markets, and also create values for our investors, but also generate that value for consumers and businesses.”
“We are very fortunate to be building a business, and launching the business at the start of 2025, in the age of the emergence of AI,” said Carr.
ROOT Intelligence was established specifically to accelerate the development of OCEAN, with Oak Global currently its sole client. “We set this up in Dublin and within the Trinity College Innovation Hub to ensure that we are bringing the outside in terms of the most recent research and development and the leading-edge technology that’s available for us to bring into the reinsurance industry, in terms of how we build out our risk orchestration platform.”
OCEAN is designed to bring the different stages of the underwriting and transaction process into a single cloud environment. Carr explained that the platform “manages the complete transaction lifecycle within a single AWS cloud platform, streamlining each step from initial broker contact, whether received via traditional email or automated feeds like a Broker Portal, through automated data integration, risk pricing, quoting, authorisation, and portfolio optimisation.”
OCEAN also “tracks post-bind performance in real time, establishing a circular feedback loop that continuously refines our underwriting decision making,” added Carr.
He went on to explain how the development of generative AI and large language model agents is now opening up further possibilities within OCEAN.
“There are multiple reference points and tools that we use as an industry to price risk and to make decision making around quoting behaviour and authorisation, and there is an opportunity for us to leverage an AI agent to holistically bring together a number of those reference points to better inform an underwriting decision for an individual deal, regardless of whether that’s a property, specialty, credit, or casualty transaction,” he said.
Carr underlined that Oak Global’s approach to AI is intended to support its underwriting talent rather than remove the human element from decision-making.
“One thing that I do want to emphasise, as we think about AI, we think about the intelligence that we’re developing. To develop the underwriting leader of the future is very much focused on a concept of holistic intelligence.” According to Carr, that means, “developing market-leading technology and leveraging the AI capabilities of today and in the future. But most importantly, building that to enable our people and with a talent first mindset, around how we develop our technology.”
Carr continued: “When you think about the capability of developing AI agents for a an underwriter to use to leverage all of the individual insights that go into underwriting a deal, we feel that there is a significant value there to enhance the profitability of our portfolio, as well as improve the responsiveness and speed at which we can engage with clients and brokers, and then critically generate insights that we can feed back to clients and brokers to help us further our understanding of our business and critically enable us to grow the market collectively.”
As Oak Global looks towards 2027, Carr said the company expects to continue building its team while ensuring that its culture develops alongside growth. The business will reach 90 people by the end of 2026, with further recruitment expected next year.
The primary focus, however, will remain on clients. “We’re very much focused on continuing to deliver for our clients and continuing to deliver that value proposition to our clients around partnerships, delivering non-risk expertise, and also supporting our clients in terms of helping them grow their business.”
With Oak Global also looking to broaden its product offering and increase the line sizes it can provide, Carr concluded that industry meetings and conferences would remain important for understanding where clients see the greatest challenges and opportunities.
“We’re really looking forward to the RVS season in fact, because that means we can kick off the conferences and listen to our clients and try to understand what’s keeping them awake at night, what are their key challenges, and how can we help. Ultimately, our success in 2027 will be driven by our ability to deliver that value proposition.”
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