PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Omniscience today announced that it has added two top executives for Asian markets. Sakuya Morimoto is VP for Japan and Akihiko Katayama has been named VP for Hong Kong. The company’s initial focus is to bring its advanced computing and AI to the insurance and financial services industries, where the challenges of capturing new, high-value opportunities are very complex on many dimensions.
Several trends have led to substantial growth opportunities in these industries in much of Asia: the increasing aging of the populations and rise of spendable cash. Today, Japan is the second largest life insurance market worldwide. Emerging Asian economies, most of which are served by companies in Hong Kong, are growing very fast as well.
“Capturing these opportunities is more complex than ever for potential insurers,” said Sunil Rawat, co-founder and CEO of Omniscience. “There’s a vast amount of data coming from many sources for each business decision and not enough expertise and insight to capture and grow the opportunities. We are addressing these hurdles.”
Moreover, the opportunities are further complicated by diverse regulatory environments and cultural norms in each market. Traditional products and approaches serving these sectors cannot handle the vast, hyperdimensional data without making approximations to come up with business decisions -- and taking weeks or months. Omniscience, on the other hand, delivers underwriting and capital management decisions rapidly and accurately.
Sakuya Morimoto joined Omniscience from Honda R&D Innovations where he was Managing Director leading Honda’s collaboration and equity investments in startups. Previously, Morimoto was COO of Exvision, a spin-out of University of Tokyo Ishikawa Lab. Prior to this, he was Sr. Director of Business Development in Asia at Canesta, which was acquired by Microsoft. He also worked at Sony, McKinsey and DeNA. Morimoto received a BA in Economics from Kobe University and an MBA from Stanford University.
Akihiko Katayama joins Omniscience from PWC where he has been the China and Hong Kong Emerging Technologies Leader and Digital Banking Consultant. Prior to this he was a management consultant with Alix Partners and Head of Decision Science for HSBC. Early in his career he was with Fair Isaac, GE Capital and Citibank. Katayama holds a BS in Operations Research from Columbia University, and an MBA from Kellogg – HKUST (a joint program from Northwestern University and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology).
“Not only do our customers find that Omniscience brings them a dramatic speed advantage for business decisions,” said Pallavi Ramnarain, VP of Business Development & Strategy to whom both Morimoto and Katayama report. “But we are able to help them see new lines of business and profitability which can have long term impact.”
About Omniscience
Omniscience (www.omniscience.com) is the first company to handle and decipher complex, hyperdimensional data sets without any approximations. This enables customers to make accurate business decisions, and find new, well-timed opportunities. The Omniscale computing model combines mathematical transformations, advanced AI and unique distributed computing to help insurance and financial services companies grow market share, save on costs, boost return on equity, and increase regulatory compliance. Over time many additional markets will also be able to use Omniscience to decipher the chaos in their environments. Based in Palo Alto, CA, investors in Omniscience include Reinsurance Group of America, TD Bank, Translink Capital and others.
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