Latest news with #AndrewMartin
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
DynaRisk secures funding to advance cyber insurance solutions
DynaRisk, a UK-based cyber risk management company, has raised $4.7m (£3.52m) in a funding round led by YFM Equity Partners to support its product innovation and facilitate international growth. The YFM deal team included Matt Gordon-Smith, Alex Neale and David Wrench, with advisory support from Broadfield Law (legal), HMT (financial), RPL (commercial), Leckie Kershaw (technology), Fortius (go-to-market) and Catalysis (organisational). DynaRisk said it intends to use the new funding to expand its operations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), North America and Asia-Pacific. The company also announced the appointment of Phil Zeidler to its board, who has experience in establishing and managing successful insurtech ventures. Gordon-Smith, YFM Equity Partners investment director, said: 'We are delighted to back Andrew and his team as they grow their international footprint and continue to lead innovation in cyber risk management.' Founded in 2016 by Andrew Martin, DynaRisk focuses on providing accessible cybersecurity solutions underpinned by advanced threat intelligence, targeting individuals, families and small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). DynaRisk collaborates with reinsurers, brokers and managing general agents (MGAs) to equip individuals and businesses with essential online protection tools. Its offerings include a range of threat intelligence-driven software-as-a-service products, portfolio-level monitoring and helpline services. The company integrates its cyber risk solutions into insurance products, providing services such as vulnerability scanning, dark web monitoring, cybersecurity scoring, training and tailored remediation guidance. DynaRisk CEO Andrew Martin said: 'Brokers, MGAs and reinsurers are rushing to tap the fast-growing cyber insurance market as cyber risk is now one of the most pressing challenges for consumers and SMEs globally. 'While working with global banks, I saw how larger corporations were using expensive and complex enterprise-level software and services and wanted to put these in the hands of more people.' Currently, DynaRisk serves more than 25 insurance clients globally, protecting approximately 2.4 million consumers and 800,000 SMEs. Recent partnerships include Beazley's Turnkey Reinsurance team, Arthur J. Gallagher, REEOIC and SCOR, joining established clients such as Chubb, SPB UK & Ireland, Aspire Insurance Advisers, Ridge Canada and BOXX Insurance. PwC served as the lead financial advisor to DynaRisk. "DynaRisk secures funding to advance cyber insurance solutions" was originally created and published by Life Insurance International, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Finextra
2 days ago
- Business
- Finextra
DynaRisk raises $4.7m to shape the future of cyber insurance
London-based cyber risk management firm DynaRisk has today announced a $4.7million funding round led by YFM Equity Partners (YFM) to accelerate product innovation and fuel international expansion. 0 DynaRisk was founded in 2016 by ex-banking cybersecurity specialist - and self-taught hacker - Andrew Martin, who recognised that the insurance industry needed more tools and data to help them tap the fast growing cyber insurance and cyber assistance market. The market lacked simplified and accessible cybersecurity solutions backed by advanced threat intelligence for individuals, families and SMEs. As demand for cyber insurance and digital risk mitigation intensifies, this round of funding will help DynaRisk expand its operations across EMEA, North America and Asia-Pacific, scaling its commercial and technical operations. Commenting on the investment, Andrew Martin, CEO of DynaRisk, said: 'Brokers, MGAs and (re)insurers are rushing to tap the fast growing cyber insurance market as cyber risk is now one of the most pressing challenges for consumers and SMEs globally. While working with global banks, I saw how larger corporations were using expensive and complex enterprise-level software and services and wanted to put these in the hands of more people. 'DynaRisk bridges that gap for the insurance sector, helping them protect their policyholders with industry-leading threat intelligence backed risk management and underwriting software, along with cyber incident response services. YFM quickly understood our vision and their support will be critical as we scale globally and continue to evolve our platform to meet growing demand.' Meanwhile, the business has appointed to its board serial entrepreneur Phil Zeidler, who has a proven track record in setting up and running successful InsurTech businesses. Today, DynaRisk works with (re)insurers, brokers and MGAs to help them empower individuals and businesses with the tools they need to protect themselves online, with a suite of threat intelligence driven SaaS products, portfolio-level monitoring and helpline services. It does this by embedding its cyber risk solutions into insurance offerings, with its software providing vulnerability scanning, dark web monitoring, cybersecurity scores, training and education, and tailored remediation guidance. DynaRisk's solutions allow brokers, underwriters and claims teams to grow premiums, enrich underwriting, boost policyholder engagement, and help reduce claims and loss ratios by helping to prevent cyber-attacks. Matt Gordon-Smith, Investment Director at YFM Equity Partners, added: 'DynaRisk has built impressive platforms and a client base in one of the fastest-growing segments of the insurance market. With cyber threats escalating and insurers and brokers under pressure to add more value to their policyholders, DynaRisk's embedded intelligence platforms and services are ideally positioned. We are delighted to back Andrew and his team as they grow their international footprint and continue to lead innovation in cyber risk management.' DynaRisk currently supports more than 25 insurance customers worldwide, covering approximately 2.4 million consumers and 800,000 SMEs. Recent client wins include Beazley's Turnkey Reinsurance team, Arthur J. Gallagher, REEOIC and SCOR, who join existing insurance firms including Chubb, SPB UK & Ireland, Aspire Insurance Advisers, Ridge Canada and BOXX Insurance Inc., reflecting the rising demand for scalable cyber risk solutions as embedded insurance grows globally. The YFM deal team comprised Matt Gordon-Smith, Alex Neale and David Wrench. YFM Advisers on the deal included Broadfield Law (Legal), HMT (Financial), RPL (Commercial) Leckie Kershaw (Technology), Fortius (GTM) and Catalysis (Organisational). PwC acted as lead financial advisor to Dynarisk.
Spectator
7 days ago
- Spectator
With glee to the silvery sea
Was it more profitable for an early-20th-century seaside railway poster to promise the undeliverable or to be slightly less enticing but at least tell the truth? In his charming and unashamedly train-spotterish book about how the British travelled to the seaside in the great days of rail, Andrew Martin quotes slogans from posters. The Great North of Scotland Railway described the Moray Firth as 'the Scottish Riviera'. The Furness Railway named Grange-over-Sands 'the Naples of the North!' (The exclamation mark injected a smidgeon of doubt, Martin feels). More realistic companies toned down their boasts. The LNER decided it should go no further than claim it took passengers to 'The Drier Side of Britain'. A North Eastern Railway poster proclaimed: 'Scarborough Braces You Up. The Air Does It.' 'Come to Southport for Mild Winters,' begged the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. A poster launching a new line to the Kentish resort of Allhallows-on-Sea, 12 miles from Gravesend, came up with the rather weak boast that the place was 'Facing Southend'. Any British pursuit once popular enough had to have a boardgame to go with it. Race to the Ocean Coast, created by Chad Valley Co. for the GWR in the late 1920s, was a game for all the family. Hazards included 'communication cord pulled' and 'line under construction'. It didn't sell very well and was discontinued in 1932. But the craze for taking trains to the seaside carried on growing, as it had been steadily since the mid-1870s. A bench a quarter of a mile long was installed on the new 'excursion platform' at Scarborough station in 1883 to absorb the vast home-going crowds after their day out. To cater for northerners travelling south, there was a regular sleeper service from Glasgow to Brighton. That Scarborough bench still exists, unlike so much else mentioned in this book, discontinued or demolished and turned into a car park in the aftermath of the brutal and short-sighted Beeching report of 1963, which recommended the closure of 2,363 stations. Every few pages in this book there is mention of 1964 or 1965. Those years were as deadly for British railway stations as 1538 and 1539 were for English monasteries. On the subject of Scarborough, Martin adds that Edwardian crowds were so huge that the excursion platform wasn't sufficient and a whole new 'excursion station' had to be built, called Scarborough Londesborough Road. Alert to class distinctions, he notes that the Londesborough Road station was very much the 'tradesman's entrance': 'The premier Scarborough train, the ex-King's Cross Scarborough Flyer, wouldn't have been seen dead at Londesborough Road.' This is a very different book from Madeleine Bunting's The Seaside: An English Love Affair (2023), which was a work of gritty social journalism. She forced us to face the truth about the sometimes dismal and impoverished back streets of these places. Martin sticks more cheerfully to the trains, the stations, the arrivals and the departures, in the past and present. To spread joy about what's left, he travels on lines to the coast that remain open, evoking his journeys in infectiously enthusiastic detail – 'sand blowing on to Platform 4 at Cleethorpes'. 'The most interesting sights on the Atlantic Coast Line,' he writes, 'include the St Blazey freight yard just beyond Par.' I must go and have a look. He salutes the Victorian visionaries who got local coastal railway lines going, such as Sir Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood, who in the 1840s developed Fleetwood, Lancashire as a port and resort. To enhance my enjoyment, I kept referring to Google Maps and the National Rail app to see what Martin meant about, for example, how long it would now take to go by train from Pwllheli to Llandudno (just 50 miles). It would be a six-hour, 40-stop trip, requiring a change at Shrewsbury. His description of his journey from Euston to Pwllhelli, complete with the diesel smell and growl of the Transport for Wales Sprinter, almost made me want to have a go – except that, in the 'quiet carriage', a passenger started a phone conversation with: 'Hi, gang, can you hear me?' There are some lovely glimpses of the early-20th-century public's appetite for the seaside – those wonderfully disinhibiting places where, as Martin writes, 'clocks were floral, golf 'crazy', castles were made of sand and piers offered a walk to nowhere'. In order to avoid cramming too much into their heavy suitcases in the days before wheelie ones, passengers arrived sweltering in layers of overcoats. So great was the demand for the sea that in 1908 the Great Eastern Railway brought barrels of seawater to Liverpool Street. Londoners could order it to be delivered to their doors at 6d for three gallons. Martin's wistful, overarching story is that 'the cars killed the trains, the planes killed the seaside, and Dr Beeching assisted the car cause with unjustified enthusiasm'. But wherever Martin goes, local railway societies seem to be doing all they can to resurrect the closed-down lines. This book makes you long for Dr Beeching's evil work to be undone.
Times
13-07-2025
- Times
Hotel Supetar Cavtat review: understated elegance on the Dalmatian Riviera
This classy hotel in the pretty town of Cavtat, on the Adriatic coast of Croatia, is housed in a handsome 1920s waterfront villa with the usual Dalmatian trappings of creamy stone and green shutters. Inside is a boutique lover's dream — it was transformed in 2022 from a humdrum three-star into an intimate, five-star bolt hole with a delightful garden, pool and sea-facing roof terrace. There is a definite sense of being looked after royally when you're offered a cold flannel and iced water immediately on arrival. The vibe is understated elegance throughout, from the 21 lovely rooms to the public areas with a changing roster of art exhibits. This article contains affiliate links, which may earn us revenue Score 8/10There's a calming mix of English and French country-house style and some bold design touches, including eye-catching (but not jarring) wallpaper in some of the rooms. Florals are fresh rather than chintzy, with hints of Englishness in the fabric headboards that come from Andrew Martin, based in Chelsea, west London. The whole effect is a soothing one, featuring light oak floors and marble bathrooms, with a touch of art nouveau in the tiling adding to a spacious and airy feel. There are 16 rooms in the main house and five in a neighbouring stone house, with views either of the seafront or the palm-shaded greenery of the gardens leading to the pool area. The smallest room in the main house comes with a little patio — if you'd like it ask for room No 107. • Discover our full guide to Croatia Score 9/10You'll eat well here. Not surprisingly, the restaurant's Mediterranean-Croatian menu is heavy on local seafood — crab, octopus, swordfish, dentex fish and scallops from nearby Ston — while Istrian beef, Pag lamb and wild rabbit satisfy the carnivores. But it's all done with a delicate and assured touch. The setting is very romantic: a wide roof terrace with views of the sea for those sultry Dalmatian summer evenings. Sink into one of the squashy sofas for a cocktail before you eat. Breakfast is just as impressive, with most produce sourced from nearby suppliers. An expansive buffet of salad, meat, cheese, seafood, fresh fruit and pastries competes with a tempting menu of eggs cooked numerous ways, plus sausages, bacon and courgette fritters. One of the hotel's cosiest spots is its ground-floor bar, a clubby, cocoon-like space that has an excellent selection of wines, including those made from local grape varieties such as grk, posip and plavac mali. There's also a lounge terrace in the area between the hotel's two buildings. • Best Croatian islands to visit• Best luxury villas in Croatia Score 7/10Behind the hotel are the gardens, where you can relax under palm and citrus trees before walking up stone steps to the pool and flopping on one of the sunbeds. It's not a very big pool, but it is certainly a peaceful spot to while away the hours. The hotel's neighbouring building has massage rooms and a sauna, and guests are able to use the extensive facilities at its five-star sister property Hotel Croatia Cavtat, accessed via a shuttle. Here you can swim in the saltwater outdoor and indoor pools before drying off in the sauna or unwinding in the steam room. The resort also has loungers on the nearby beach that Hotel Supetar Cavtat guests can use for free. Score 8/10The hotel is in a prime waterfront spot in the main harbour, discreetly back from the water's edge. There is a beach just a few yards away, and if you continue along the footpath you can wander around the pine-shaded headland that forms one of Cavtat's two forested peninsulas. The town makes an appealing alternative base to Dubrovnik: it's only a 15-minute drive from the airport and boat trips to nearby islands are offered just a few minutes' walk from the hotel. You can also sail to Dubrovnik — or just hop on the bus if you're not in a hurry (about 40 minutes). Price B&B doubles from £427Restaurant mains from £33Family-friendly NAccessible N Mary Novakovich was a guest of Hotel Supetar Cavtat ( • Best things to do in Croatia• Best beaches in Croatia
Forbes
10-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Facing A $57 Million Federal Tax Bill, Washington University Chancellor Worriers About Other 'Existential Threats'
Washington University in St. Louis is one of at least 10 schools that will see its endowment tax rate jump from 1.4% to at least 4% in 2026. getty Republicans just stuck Washington University in St. Louis with a much bigger tax bill on its $12 billion endowment. University chancellor Andrew Martin told students, faculty and staff in an email Wednesday that the Congressional budget bill signed into law by President Donald Trump last Friday will hit the university's $12 billion endowment with a 4% excise tax on its investment returns, up from the previous 1.4% rate, starting in January . The estimated $57 million annual tax is a $37 million increase from Washington University's previous tax liability, Martin wrote. 'While this is a significant increase, it is a much better outcome than some of the earlier proposals, which could have raised the rate to as high as 21%. It is not an exaggeration to say that, of the many existential threats we face in the current environment, an increase in our tax liability of that magnitude would have been catastrophic,' he said in the email. Using the latest available federal data from fiscal year 2023, Forbes estimated that at least 10 schools will likely see the tax rate on their endowments increase in 2026. Another 27 colleges likely got a tax break—they do not meet the new 3,000 tuition-paying student enrollment threshold for the endowment tax. These estimates are conservative, given that enrollments fluctuate year to year and endowments mostly grew between fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2024 thanks to high stock market returns. A survey of 658 colleges, which includes some of the wealthiest schools, by Commonfund with the National Association of College and University Business Officers showed college endowments grew by 11% in fiscal 2024, which ended on June 30, 2024. Washington University has seen its endowment balloon in recent years—at the end of fiscal 2021, the endowment netted a mind-boggling 65% return (the median return for college endowments that year was 27%), which brought its value from $9.6 billion to $15.3 billion. The endowment, now valued at $12 billion, generated an 8.7% return in fiscal 2024, following two years of negative returns in fiscal 2023 and 2022. There's plenty more in the budget bill that will impact universities. The bill brought a slate of changes to federal student loans, scrapped regulations for for-profit schools, changed Pell grant eligibility requirements—and that's just in the sections directly related to education. 'Changes to Medicaid funding, energy policy and other topics addressed in this new legislation may also impact the WashU community in the years ahead,' Martin wrote. 'We will be communicating soon about steps we will need to take to preserve university resources and become a more efficient and resilient organization.' More From Forbes Forbes These 26 Rich Private Colleges Just Got A Tax Cut From Republicans By Emma Whitford Forbes Unprecedented Student Loan Overhaul In 'Big Beautiful Bill' Passes House, Heads To Trump By Adam S. Minsky Forbes Here's What The Senate Budget And Tax Bill Means For Colleges By Emma Whitford
