Under the arrangement, agents will go online and type in the barest of information about their client—business name and address and a few other details—and algorithms will begin filling in information about the prospective policyholder. That is in contrast to longstanding practices in which insurers often ask dozens of questions for the process to get started. For Two Sigma, it is the first significant attempt to branch out to a new business from investing. The firm is known as one of the most successful “quants,” which are quantitative hedge funds that use computer systems to trawl data, make predictions and trade automatically in the markets.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/quants-do-the-math-on-a-new-target-insurance-1475006920