Verikai Announces Senior Leadership Transition
Hari Sundram, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer will transition the CEO role to current President/Chief Revenue Officer, Jeffrey Chen, as part of planned succession effective August 9, 2021.
Today, Verikai announced that co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Hari Sundram, will transition the role of CEO to current President & Chief Revenue Officer, Jeffrey Chen, who will also be joining the board of directors. As CEO, Jeff will oversee all company operations.
“This shift is something we’ve planned for a long time, and the time is now,” said Hari Sundram. “Jeff joined Verikai a long time ago and built out all the company’s major functions we needed to make it successful. It’s one thing to start a company, but a whole different beast to scale it. Jeff has been the architect of our operational strategy, creating the processes we needed then honing them so we could expand at the rate the market demanded.”
“When I started Verikai, the goal was always for me to expand on the thesis that the use of alternative data coupled with machine learning could greatly improve risk prediction. Now that we have proved this thesis true with our market traction, it’s time for Verikai to scale. Having Jeff’s background as a former management consultant along with his insurance software experience makes him the perfect person to lead Verikai into the next phase,” said Sundram. “I couldn’t be more confident in Verikai’s future with Jeff leading the charge.”
Hari is best described as a serial entrepreneur – a visionary and builder who pushes the envelope of ideas; always looking for what he can develop, which will make the biggest impact. This transition has always been part of the plan for Verikai, and with the company’s immense success over the last year, the timing was right for a transition from Hari to Jeff.
“I’m honored to be appointed the CEO of Verikai at such an exciting time in our company history,” said Jeff Chen. “In the last year alone, we have seen tremendous improvement of our risk models as well as the launch of our game-changing Marketplace. Our market momentum is palpable and with so much upside, the opportunities feel endless.”
“I’d like to thank Hari for his guidance and leadership, and for entrusting me with the opportunity to lead the great organization that he built,” said Chen. “I have been lucky to work side-by-side and learn from one of the best entrepreneurs I know. Using his unique vision and market knowledge, he has laid out a plan for Verikai to achieve great things for many years to come.”
About Jeffrey Chen:
Jeffrey Chen has 20+ years of experience as a management consultant and enterprise software leader. Prior to Verikai, he spent six years at Guidewire Software leading their value sales organization. Prior to his move into software, he worked at multiple consulting firms, advising fortune 500 companies for over a decade on customer strategy and operations. Jeff holds a BS from Penn State University, MS from George Washington University, and an MBA from Georgetown University.
About Verikai:
Founded in 2018, Verikai is an insurance technology company leveraging alternative data and machine learning to change the way the industry views risk. Our well-established database of more than 1.3 trillion data points includes over 5,000 behavior attributes for 250+ million people in the United States and provides deep insight to these individuals’ true health risks. With this data, Verikai generates risk reports in real-time with only a census. This greater insight helps insurance companies increase new business, reduce losses and improve efficiency in the underwriting process – and ultimately, provide consumers and businesses with greater access to a broader range of insurance products.