As CEO, where are you investing in automation and tooling to improve operational excellence and reduce friction across teams and geographies?

As we scale, we are naturally experiencing challenges around maintaining strong levels of collaboration and visibility into our business. This year, a major focus has been building strong data foundations across the company, with the implementation of a data platform that centralizes all the data that flows through the company, and a business intelligence layer on top that allows anyone to quickly and accurately access this information. At a high level, the goal is to create a single and shared source of truth: consistent definitions, reliable data flows, and decision-ready visibility into what matters most across the business. 

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After welcoming Arius last year and Matrisk AI this year, what has been the impact of these acquisitions at Akur8? And, looking ahead, what will guide your approach to future acquisitions and integrations?

Arius and Matrisk AI have strengthened Akur8 in a very complementary way. Arius allowed us to expand our capabilities into Reserving, bringing deep domain expertise and an exceptional team to Akur8. This acquisition was transformative for us because it validated M&A as a very effective and sustainable way to accelerate our growth and accomplish our company vision. The acquisition of Matrisk AI provided Akur8 with a very sophisticated applied LLM technology that is already being used by our customers today to revolutionize how they access and leverage competitive rating intelligence. The world-class LLM engineering team that joined us from Matrisk will further reinforce Akur8’s ability to build the best AI applications for actuarial teams across our product suite

Looking forward, the same principles will guide us. We’ll be selective and strategic, prioritizing acquisitions that strengthen our platform vision and bring real expertise. And we’ll keep refining our integration playbook so that each addition makes Akur8 stronger as one company. 

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With Akur8 growing quickly across North America in New York, Atlanta, and Montréal, how are you scaling operations so each office can succeed locally while still operating as one coordinated team?

We have experienced very fast growth in North America in the past year: we doubled the size of our local North America team and onboarded 27 new customers. 

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The main challenge as I see it has been to create enough autonomy for our teams to adapt to the specificities of our North America markets, while still remaining one global company and keeping a single culture and way of operating. Whether it’s the insurance pricing process, hiring practices, or organizing marketing events, the US has its own specific way of doing things.

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Operationally this means giving teams a high level of autonomy and ability to tailor, while ensuring we all work toward a shared set of goals, and that certain processes remain very consistent company-wide to ensure we are an efficient organization.

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Success for me looks like this: regardless of whether you’re in Montréal, Atlanta, or New York, collaboration feels natural, decisions are made quickly, and customers experience one Akur8 in terms of quality and responsiveness.

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Felix d'Alançon is Chief Operating Officer at Akur8, in charge of M&A, partnerships and company performance, as well as North America coordination. Felix started his career at the international consulting firm Oliver Wyman, where he led strategic and operational transformation projects for large companies in France and in the US. Felix is based in Akur8's New York office.

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