Alex Thompson

Alex was co-founder of Quindiem Actuarial Consulting in 2001, which was subsequently incorporated into Ernst&Young in 2011, after which he became head of EY’s Africa Insurance Solutions business.

He pioneered the use of Dynamic Financial Analysis for insurers in South Africa and the rest of Africa to optimise capital use and purchase of reinsurance.

In 2016 he successfully raised funding as a co-founder to start building Naked Insurance, with the business launching in May 2018.

Naked is a car insurance provider built on artificial intelligence.

Because it has been developed from scratch (and not to link with a call centre insurer), it allows clients to control their insurance instantly on their phone, without human intervention.

Apart from the convenience, this results in significant cost savings (not needing to pay for manual processes like call centre discussions, the savings are passed on directly through lower premiums).

Naked also has a world-first for car insurance called “CoverPause”: with one click on Naked’s app, customers can pause their accident cover if the car won’t be used for a day or more– reducing the premium instantly.

Thomson leads the integration of Naked’s insurance offering with the cutting edge in-house software development team. He built the system to automate all the backend administration of Naked’s policy administration and finance functions, running without any human intervention.

“I’m excited about embracing the latest technology to do insurance in a way that legacy systems can’t. I’ve always been interested in finding the optimal balance between the role of the individual and that of the machine to do technical actuarial modelling.

The human touch is vital in insurance, including bringing creativity and empathy, but so much of what we know today will be done radically differently in the years to come, so it’s time to get strapped in!”