Rob Newbold, president of Extreme Event Solutions at Verisk, said Spear’s track record in predictive analytics and risk modeling, combined with his ability to anticipate client needs, will “advance our ongoing technology transformation.”
Spear joins Verisk from Flywire, a global payments enablement and software company, where he spent the past five years as senior vice president of engineering. He previously served as senior vice president of engineering at education and content provider Cengage Learning.
In his new role, Spear will oversee engineering, quality assurance, and IT functions, leading innovation through AI- and cloud-based architecture to deliver high-resiliency solutions, accelerate product development, and enhance catastrophe risk modeling operations. He said Verisk’s mission “to advance global resilience immediately struck a chord” with him, noting that catastrophe modeling is “a powerful solution for solving complex technological challenges that directly impact insurers and the consumers they protect.” Spear added that by leveraging cutting-edge, cloud-native software platforms, Verisk is “reinventing how data is harnessed—optimizing workflows and streamlining decision-making to deliver enhanced insights and more resilient support across the insurance value chain.”
Verisk’s Extreme Event Solutions provides catastrophe models covering more than 120 countries and territories, capturing risks from natural catastrophes and man-made events such as terrorism. Its clients in insurance, reinsurance, finance, and government rely on the company’s science, software, and consulting services to manage catastrophe risk, develop insurance-linked securities, and strengthen resilience against potential disasters.
