Overland Park insurance software developer ClaimKit gets $1.8 million to launch second product

Jan. 28--Software developer ClaimKit Inc. has raised $1.8 million to help launch its second product, which rapidly analyzes commercial insurance policies.

Chris Cheatham, ClaimKit's CEO, said the new product, RiskGenius, can sort through thousands of policies, match up similar sections from each and present them side by side for easier analysis.

That could save independent insurance agents and brokers untold hours, he said, perhaps cutting policy review time in half.

"In our beta testing, the software analyzed 2,000 policies in 3 1/2 minutes," Cheatham said. "I have friends in the industry, agents, who have to spend evenings and weekends analyzing competing policies. That can involve hours of cutting and pasting similar clauses into a spreadsheet. Our new product does that for them."

Cheatham previously was a lawyer handling insurance cases. Managing all the related documents and data was a terrible task, he said, and he set out to use technology to make it less odious.

In late 2011, he and Doug Reiser founded ClaimKit, which now has offices in Overland Park and a staff of five. The first product was Privity, software to manage the documents in insurance cases.

Cheatham said Privity "has made things better" for attorneys, insurance carriers and accountants. After one big claim, someone asked to use some Privity-managed files for underwriting policies. And that sparked the idea for RiskGenius' type of organizing of policy provisions.

"That was my second light bulb moment," Cheatham said.

Now RiskGenius is ready to launch, he said, and ideas are brewing for more applications to streamline and improve insurance processes.

Greg Hack: 816-234-4439, @GregHack

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