MS Transverse builds AI-ready systems to accelerate growth

MS Transverse has spent the past year and a half reworking its processes and systems to be AI-ready, giving it a head start on competitors, according to Robert Mozeika (pictured), the company’s COO.

“I am very much process-first, technology-following, because it’s the tools that really help your process along the way,” Mozeika said.

The hybrid fronting company partners with MGAs and program administrators, internal compliance, reserving, accounting, and reinsurance requirements. Mozeika’s first priority was ensuring that the program life cycle, data flow, and systems could meet all those obligations.

“We brought in various different third-party vendors and partners to help us with their tools, making sure they all integrate across,” he said. “One of the most important things I really wanted to ensure is that all our data requirements from the minute the bordereaux comes in are captured… ensuring it’s going to be AI-ready.”

MS Transverse had been growing rapidly. Unlike many larger competitors that planned to be AI-ready over several years, Mozeika aimed to be operational in a matter of months.

“So we’re building the process and those systems to make sure all our data - from ingestion all the way through to reinsurance needs, compliance, and so on - will be ready in a couple of months, which is pretty exciting,” he said.

A central challenge has been bordereaux ingestion, which arrives in multiple formats, often with errors. Working with third-party partners, the company standardized the data to meet AI-ready standards.

“What we try to do for our clients is not necessarily make sure they give it to us in one strict format… we transform it into the data we need,” Mozeika said.

The transformation relied on engagement across all departments. Mozeika formed a skilled project management team and designated representatives from each area to ensure the system met functional needs.

“We had full support from Dave Paulson, our CEO, and John Fitzgerald, president of MS Transverse, giving me full bandwidth to do what we really needed to do,” he said. “We involved every single department across the company in this process to make sure we got buy-in.”

Historical data has also been incorporated - making it AI-ready was a task made easier by the company’s relatively short history compared to some incumbents.

“Some companies going back 50 years trying to get data ready that’s a chore. We were successful in getting our historical data AI-ready,” he said.

Mozeika emphasized flexibility. Vendors were selected not only for capability but for their willingness to adapt to MS Transverse’s processes.

“I did not want a rigid system where we had to change our process to match their system requirements,” he said. “I wanted vendors that were very collaborative and of a similar mindset - a flexible system.”

Once infrastructure was in place, testing involved department leads and sandboxing tools. Representatives provided sign-offs to ensure systems met the needs of underwriting, risk, accounting, and compliance teams.

“The most important aspect is that if everyone is siloed, it gets clunky,” Mozeika said. “There has to be some understanding of flexibility… It might not be important to that particular department, but it’s important somewhere else.”

The collaborative approach ensured adoption. Departments felt ownership of the system, not just as recipients of a top-down mandate.

“They’re excited that they were a part of it, and it’s their system as well,” he said.

Technology strategy leans heavily on external solutions, customized for internal processes.

“I would say it’s pretty much ‘buy’ at the end of the day – however, with a tremendous amount of customization for our process,” he said.

Vendor selection remains rigorous. Mozeika conducts proof-of-concepts to test claims, flexibility, and collaboration.

“I run POCs – proof of concepts. I’ll say, ‘Here, you’ve got a month. Take a couple of our programs. Let me see what you can do and spit it out.’ That’s where I found the most flexible and collaborative vendors,” he said.

The goal is to integrate best-in-class tools without forcing the company to bend its processes to rigid external systems.