Akur8, the actuarial AI platform, has seen its cloud-hosted insurance rating engine Deploy awarded Luminary status by financial services research and advisory firm Celent, in both the North America and Global 2026 editions of its Property Casualty Rating Engine reports.
Luminary is the highest rating Celent hands out. It goes to solutions that score strongly on both technological sophistication and breadth of capability, and that usually hold a leading position in the market. The accolade lands roughly a year after Deploy launched in October 2025, and the product is now used by more than 15 insurers in 12 countries.
According to Akur8, the result points to rising appetite among carriers for rating engines that operate independently of the policy administration system, can handle regular rate updates, and help insurers stay competitive.
Deploy is designed to let insurers react to market changes at the same pace their pricing teams can build models. Instead of having finished models rewritten as code inside a policy administration system, actuaries can push rate structures created in Akur8 straight to a live rating API, leaving IT departments free for other priorities. Testing, governance and auditability are embedded throughout the process, meaning rate updates can go live more quickly without increasing risk.
Akur8 says rate plans can be imported in minutes, deployed in seconds and quoted in milliseconds via the API. Teams can trial deployments and model outcomes before any change affects policyholders, while every amendment is versioned and logged, creating a record of who altered what and where for regulatory and filing purposes.
The engine links to any policy administration system through its API, and as part of the Verisk Strategic Alliance partner network, Akur8 is licensed to support customer-imported Verisk ISO Electronic Rating Content within Deploy.
In August 2026, the firm introduced the Akur8 Deploy Rating Accelerator on Guidewire Marketplace. Aimed at PolicyCenter users, it supplies ready-made mappings, standardised transformation logic and validation scripts, reducing integration work from months to weeks. Deploy delivers itemised rating factors and premium breakdowns in real time inside PolicyCenter quote workflows and also handles offline batch re-rating. After launch, actuarial teams can revise rating logic, release new rates and roll out updated products in Deploy without raising IT tickets or redeploying PolicyCenter.
Greek insurer Hellas Direct is one of the carriers already using the engine. Since moving onto Akur8’s complete pricing platform, its pricing team has cut time spent on coding and testing, accelerated the journey from insight to production, and processed more than 100m quotes.
Deploy forms one component of Akur8’s wider pricing platform, which covers data preparation, risk and demand modelling, rate building, rate management through Rate Repo, market intelligence via Discover, and pricing optimisation where permitted by regulation.
Akur8 CEO and co-founder Sam Falmagne said, “A rating engine sits at the most sensitive point in an insurer’s pricing chain: it is where months of modeling work either reaches customers accurately or doesn’t. We designed Deploy so that the people who understand the rates best stay in control of them all the way to the quote. Seeing Celent recognize Deploy as a Luminary tells us that approach resonates with carriers in every market we serve.”
Celent head of insurance, North America Karlyn Carnahan said, “Rating has become a strategic capability for P&C carriers, as rate changes come faster and pricing models grow more sophisticated. Akur8 Deploy stood out in this year’s evaluation for closing the gap between the actuarial team and production rating, pairing strong functionality with a modern, cloud-based architecture. Earning Luminary status in both our North American and global editions reflects that combination.”
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