Bold Penguin, the software company delivering an effortless quote and bind commercial insurance experience, is pleased to name Lakshan De Silva as Chief Data Scientist. De Silva reports directly to Ben Clarke, co-founder and Chief Data Officer, and spearheads the data science team at Bold Penguin. 

“Bold Penguin data science is a key component in continuing to upgrade small business insurance. Bold Penguin is the only place you can build scalable machine learning for commercial insurance because this is where the industry comes together,” said De Silva. “The team has already made the quote and bind process instantaneous. I’m proud to lead our efforts to make the extraction, enrichment and comprehension of underwriting data instantaneous. As  we achieve our goals, commercial insurance will truly be frictionless.” 

De Silva is a graduate of both Harvard Business School and Singularity University. He got his start in the insurance industry as Head of Business Solutions at QBE Insurance. After watching underwriters run basic internet searches for data, De Silva identified a need for data science solutions in insurance. De Silva became a partner and Chief Technology Officer at Intellect SEEC before joining Bold Penguin. 

“Collaborating with Lakshan to build our data science team is a dream. We’ve known each other for many years and I had always greatly respected the work he was doing in the insurance industry,” said Clarke. “In our short time working together, we have launched one product and re-launched another product all while working with new insurance carrier partners. This is certainly an exciting time for Bold Penguin and commercial insurance.” 

The Bold Penguin data science team has created and implemented solutions to extract and enrich data from insurance documents like emails, schedules of values, ACORD forms, and insurance policies. While the team has already successfully partnered with carriers, De Silva has his sights set on big, measurable goals. 

“As we are  seeing our customers’ expense and loss ratios go down -- that’s when I know Bold Penguin data solutions have made a real difference,” said De Silva.  

‍