Headquarters:
Alphonsus Gallery, Suite 3, The Linenhall, 32-38 Linenhall Street, Belfast, BT2 8BG
Year founded:
2014
Number of employees:
130
Phone:
07798705155
Email:
jake.harding@appliedsystems.com
Website:
www.cytora.com
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/cytora
Richard Hartley
Co-founder
Juan de Castro
President
Tasha Smith
HR Director
Leadership
Richard Hartley is co-founder and CEO at Cytora, where he leads product and business strategy to scale Cytora’s capabilities across the commercial insurance and reinsurance underwriting workflow.
Prior to Cytora, Hartley worked as a product strategist at eBaoTech, a cloud technology vendor to the insurance industry. He holds a master’s in political science from University College London.
Co-founder
Richard Hartley
With over 20 years of experience in growth strategies and digital transformations, Juan de Castro is president at Cytora, where he leads product strategy, sales, distribution, partnerships, and operations.
Having previously served as UK COO at Hiscox and senior manager at McKinsey’s Silicon Valley office, de Castro brings a wealth of expertise in leveraging technology in corporate settings.
President
Juan de Castro
Tasha Smith is a strategic HR leader with over eight years of experience and a master’s degree in Human Resource Management and Change Management. As HR director at RPS, she leads enterprise-wide initiatives that drive talent development, cultural transformation, and performance.
Smith has launched leadership programs, shaped retention strategies, and developed a mindfulness-based meditation series now offered across RPS. Prior to RPS, she served as vice president of marketing for the Volusia/Flagler SHRM chapter and was named one of the “40 Under 40” by The Daytona Beach News-Journal.
HR Director
Tasha Smith
Christy Hutchison
Vice President, Marketing
Christy Hutchinson serves as vice president, marketing, at Risk Placement Services, where she is responsible for advancing business priorities through strategic and creative marketing programs that position the brand in the marketplace, drive client engagement, and generate demand for RPS products and services.
Hutchison’s extensive leadership experience includes roles at prominent marketing firms, where she worked across a range of industries including healthcare, pharmaceuticals. and Fortune 500 insurance companies. She is a graduate of Michigan State University.
Vice President, Marketing
Christy Hutchison
Cristi Carrington
Chief Distribution Officer
Cristi Carrington has worked in the insurance industry for nearly 30 years and is the point person for Brown & Riding’s carrier relationships. She manages the underwriting division and has developed many specialized programs for the company during her tenure, including a Habitational program, DIC, MPL, All Risk, including Wind & Earthquake, and a nationwide risk purchasing group for a top 40 nationally ranked retailer.
Carrington currently serves on WSIA’s Board of Directors and is also the organization’s PAC committee co-chair. She also serves as president of the Surplus Line Association of Washington.
Chief Distribution Officer
Cristi Carrington
Christopher Welty, PHR, SHRM-CP
Chief Human Resources Officer
Elizabeth Bounds
General Counsel
Nealy Farshadi
Principal, Strategic Client Relations
Pam Chhabra
Manager – Residential Strata
Christopher Welty joined Brown & Riding in 2007 as an HR assistant and swiftly advanced within the company. His dedication and talent led to a series of promotions, culminating in his appointment as the firm’s CHRO in 2019.
During his tenure, Welty has seen B&R more than quadruple in growth. He helped successfully integrate the company through two mergers and has been a strong advocate for many of the company’s important benefit plan enhancements. He excels at collaboration and has been a key contributor in establishing and promoting the company’s culture and offering programs and opportunities to help employees.
Chief Human Resources Officer
Christopher Welty, PHR, SHRM-CP
Elizabeth Bounds oversees Brown & Riding’s legal, risk management, and claims departments. As the company’s chief legal resource, she reviews and negotiates corporate contracts and manages the firm’s litigation, internal legal resources, and relationships with outside counsel.
She also works closely with B&R’s senior management in developing overall risk management strategies for the firm and is directly accountable to the Board of Directors for implementing risk control measures and for the facilitation and oversight of corporate liability insurance placements. In the claims department, she takes an especially active role in policy interpretation and client claims advocacy.
General Counsel
Elizabeth Bounds
Nealy Farshadi is instrumental in helping strengthen and grow Brown & Riding’s client relationships. She maintains and improves quality procedures, oversees B&R’s ISO certification, and manages the firm’s client feedback program. Her contributions enable the executive management team to act on client input effectively. As a result, B&R’s client feedback scores greatly exceed the average and continue to improve each year.
Farshadi also supports and furthers the growth of B&R and its employees by contributing to professional development within the organization and being a resource to staff.
Principal, Strategic Client Relations
Nealy Farshadi
Stephen McMillan first entered the financial services Industry when he joined GE Capital as a finance analyst in 2008, from which he progressed through roles working both onshore and offshore. From there, he moved into Pacific Premium Funding as a financial planning and analysis leader in 2012 and was a key resource in the evolution of the business, first with the successful sale to Macquarie Pacific Funding and then the following progression into IQumulate Premium Funding, where he is now the commercial manager.
As commercial manager, McMillan leads a team that is responsible for commercial analysis and business support, identifying and reporting improvement initiatives, and the securitization and treasury functions of the business.
Commercial Manager
Stephen McMillan
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Adam Basaldella
Manager – Claims
Stephen McMillan first entered the financial services Industry when he joined GE Capital as a finance analyst in 2008, from which he progressed through roles working both onshore and offshore. From there, he moved into Pacific Premium Funding as a financial planning and analysis leader in 2012 and was a key resource in the evolution of the business, first with the successful sale to Macquarie Pacific Funding and then the following progression into IQumulate Premium Funding, where he is now the commercial manager.
As commercial manager, McMillan leads a team that is responsible for commercial analysis and business support, identifying and reporting improvement initiatives, and the securitization and treasury functions of the business.
Product Manager
Claire Watson
Stephen McMillan first entered the financial services Industry when he joined GE Capital as a finance analyst in 2008, from which he progressed through roles working both onshore and offshore. From there, he moved into Pacific Premium Funding as a financial planning and analysis leader in 2012 and was a key resource in the evolution of the business, first with the successful sale to Macquarie Pacific Funding and then the following progression into IQumulate Premium Funding, where he is now the commercial manager.
As commercial manager, McMillan leads a team that is responsible for commercial analysis and business support, identifying and reporting improvement initiatives, and the securitization and treasury functions of the business.
Commercial Manager
Stephen McMillan
“If we focus on our talent, then we know our clients will feel the RPS difference and choose us as their first call every time”
Adam Mazan,
Risk Placement Services
“Our associates are our number one audience for engagement and support”
Adam Mazan,
Risk Placement Services
Ivan Verescuk
Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director
Shaun O’Brien
Head of Underwriting
Emily Walker
Head of Strata and Development
Rex Oakman
Head of Operations and Risk
Sandy Newton
Head of Underwriting
Andrew Mitchell
Manager – NSW
Michael Prokopis
Manager – Southern Region
Pam Chhabra
Manager – Residential Strata
Jeffrey Valdivia
Manager – Commercial Strata
Adam Basaldella
Manager – Claims
Founded in 2014, Cytora is a leading insurtech company focused on transforming commercial insurance through AI and data-driven automation. The company was established to address one of the industry’s longstanding challenges – the slow, manual, and largely paper-based process of assessing, underwriting, and pricing commercial risk.
Traditionally, insurers relied on fragmented data sources and labour-intensive workflows that could take days or even weeks to complete. Cytora was created to modernize this process by applying AI to both public and proprietary data, enabling insurers to make faster, more accurate underwriting decisions at scale.
Headquartered in London, with a registered office in Brighton, UK, Cytora has grown into a significant player within the global insurance technology market. The company employs approximately 130 people and has expanded its influence across major insurance markets in the UK, Europe, and North America. A major milestone in its growth came in September 2025, when Cytora was acquired by Applied Systems, a leading provider of insurance software solutions. The acquisition further strengthened Cytora’s market reach and positioned its technology within a broader ecosystem serving insurers, brokers, and insurance intermediaries worldwide.
Cytora’s primary customer base consists of commercial insurance organizations, including insurers, brokers, reinsurers, and MGAs. The company has established relationships with several prominent global insurance brands, including Allianz, Chubb, Starr, Beazley, Zurich, Markel, AXA XL, and Arch Insurance. These clients use Cytora’s technology to improve operational efficiency, enhance risk assessment capabilities, and streamline decision-making throughout the insurance lifecycle.
At the centre of Cytora’s offering is its Digital Risk Processing Platform, an AI-powered solution designed to digitize, evaluate, and intelligently route insurance risks. Leveraging LLMs and agentic AI technologies, the platform automates key processes across new business underwriting, policy renewals, and claims management. By converting unstructured data into actionable insights, Cytora enables insurers to process submissions more efficiently, improve underwriting consistency, and respond more quickly to customer needs.
A notable recent innovation is Cytora Autopilot, launched in March 2026. This agentic workflow automation capability is designed to orchestrate end-to-end insurance processes with minimal human intervention, further accelerating risk processing and operational efficiency. Through continuous investment in AI and automation, Cytora has positioned itself as a leading technology partner helping commercial insurers modernize their operations and compete in an increasingly digital marketplace.
Product overview
Cytora is a risk digitization and workflow orchestration platform for commercial insurance. It turns broker submissions and claims – from any source – into decision-ready data, then runs the underwriting and claims workflows on top automatically. Headless by design: the value lives in the digitization and orchestration layer, not the screen. Trusted by Chubb, Zurich, Markel.
Key features and capabilities
Intake and classification across all formats; agentic extraction with field-level confidence scoring, chain-of-thought and provenance; communication linking over time into a single policy view; Resolve/Enrich data services; configurable Human Review for exceptions only; and Autopilot orchestration – workflows that respond, wait, and execute from submission to quote, self-serve configurable.
Integrations
API-first. Structured output delivers via API, webhook, or download into your existing PAS (Guidewire, Duck Creek), CRM (Salesforce), pricing engines and cat models or a bespoke interface. Inbound, the Data Library connects external providers (AddressCloud, Moody’s) and your own internal sources. SAML SSO supported.
A communication arrives via API or email inbox through bi-directional sync with broker systems via API. The platform classifies and routes it, digitizes the content with confidence scores and provenance, and resolves and enriches the data. Low-confidence fields go to Human Review; everything else passes automatically. Autopilot then assembles context and runs the workflow to completion.
How our product works
After-sales and customer services
A dedicated Customer Success team handles setup, SSO configuration, and custom integrations, while Cytora Support covers operational queries and migrations. The platform supports fully managed and self-service models: carriers can configure schemas, channels and workflows themselves, with versioning, sandbox testing, and benchmarking. Documentation and API reference are available at docs.cytora.com.
Contact us for a demo
Jake Harding, jake.harding@appliedsystems.com