Ep277 Andre Finn Intellegri: Applying the Big Hypothesis Model to insurance

Nov 14, 2025

Andre Finn, Chief Strategy Officer of Intellegri and founder of Schemus, dives into advanced capital modeling innovations. He discusses the transformative Big Hypothesis Model, enhancing risk assessment and introducing insurable products for currently uninsurable perils. With a groundbreaking 86,400x speed improvement in modeling, Finn explains its potential for real-time capital insights and better pricing strategies. He reflects on industry adoption challenges while highlighting a cultural shift toward innovation and its significant implications for investors and actuaries.

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INSIGHT

Small Uncertainty Cuts Unlock Big Capital

Narrowing uncertainty around tail risk can release large amounts of capital for insurers.
Releasing that capital could boost returns and make the sector more attractive to investors.

ANECDOTE

From Satellite To Power Risk Modelling

Andre described starting with niche risks like satellite insurance where systemic failure is obvious.
He used that experience to transfer modelling lessons to other complex perils like power stations and solar.

INSIGHT

Big Hypothesis Model Is Insurance-Ready

The Big Hypothesis Model is a Bayesian hierarchical system developed over a decade for complex risk analysis.
Intellegri licensed it exclusively to commercialise that capability for insurance use.

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Welcome to a really exciting re-encounter with someone who has been out of our industry for some years but is now back with a highly original new proposition.
In my line of work I get to see an awful lot of new insurance ideas and so it takes a lot to fire up my imagination.
And when I talk to people on this podcast about those new ideas – often the new product niche or service they are looking at might have a total addressable market of a few billion dollars.
But today our guest has something that is applicable to the entire multi-trillion dollar capital base of the global P&C insurance industry.
Andre Finn is the Chief Strategy Officer of Intellegri, a business looking to apply advanced mathematical and computational techniques to capital modelling.
Now if that sounds a bit dry at first, please bear with me.
At present our industry holds large amounts of excess capital to cover possible adverse development in reserves, based around wide probability ranges around what our tail risk is.
If we could narrow that range down, even a tiny amount, we could release large amounts of capital, which would improve our returns and make our sector much more attractive to investors.
But since this technology can also model scenarios to high new levels of detail and accuracy, it could also be applied to creating entirely new insurance products to cover perils that are currently uninsurable.
Any surplus capital could then be applied to these new products and we could expand the insurance market, again making our sector far more attractive overall.
The possibilities are genuinely exciting.
I promise you that this is not going to be a maths podcast.
Andre is authentic and incredibly down to earth and focused on the practical delivery of something new and genuinely revolutionary.
Andre was also the founder and CEO of another advanced modelling and analytics firm called Sciemus for almost 15 years from 2001 and so has long industry experience, and possibly a few scars and lessons learned to show for it.
Back then the insurtech phenomenon hadn’t yet come into being, so sitting here in 2025 the timing would appear to be far better than it was back after the turn of the millennium.
NOTES:
Highly recommended further reading on Intellegri is to be found here:
https://www.intellegri.com/
Andre rightly thanked Howden for the use of their London office for this recording.
He also mentioned former collaborator Henry Sopher

LINKS:
We thank our naming sponsor AdvantageGo:
https://www.advantagego.com