Akur8 joins Verisk alliance to embed ISO content in rating engine

Akur8 took a sharper step from pricing modeler to production system by joining Verisk’s Strategic Alliance network and gaining the right to support customer-imported ISO Electronic Rating Content inside its Deploy rating engine. The move matters because it ties modern actuarial design directly to the rating content many property and casualty carriers still need to implement, validate and govern rates without starting over.

The licensing arrangement lets Akur8 incorporate Verisk’s ISO ERC, which includes advisory loss costs, rules and forms information, inside the environment insurers use to deploy rates. Verisk says that matters in a world where carriers have to keep up with 75 or more ISO circulars issued each week. It also says users of ISO ERC are 33% more likely to be current on ISO releases. In Verisk’s materials, the format can cut overall work effort by up to 30%, while some product material says it can save 63% of the time on a typical change and lower overall cost by 35%.

For Akur8, the alliance fits a broader push beyond pricing models alone. The company says it serves more than 350 insurers worldwide across more than 40 countries in property and casualty, life and annuity. On March 17, 2026, Akur8 acquired Slope Software to expand into life and annuity actuarial modeling, and its Discover platform, which incorporates Matrisk’s capabilities, continuously ingests U.S. regulatory filings and related data. Together, those moves show a company building around the full lifecycle of rate work, from analysis to deployment and filings intelligence.

The Verisk content side carries its own weight. Verisk says its ISO Forms, Rules and Loss Costs coverage spans 31 commercial and personal lines and has supported hundreds of insurers for more than 50 years. That long runway gives the partnership a practical edge for carriers that want faster product rollout without rebuilding rating logic, controls and governance each time a change lands. Troy Smith, Verisk’s vice president of Ratings Solutions, summed up the shift plainly: “Modernizing rating is not just a technology upgrade; it is an operating model shift.” The alliance suggests more vendors will keep chasing that same goal, linking AI-driven pricing tools with the content backbone insurers still rely on to stay current.