US insurance company RiverStone is to invest £2.5 million in a research and development (R&D) project at its Belfast satellite office after Invest NI offered almost half a million pounds in financial support.
The New Hampshire-headquartered business originally established its UK subsidiary RS Progress in Northern Ireland during 2021.
Based at River House on Belfast’s High Street, RS Progress is an IT service provider focusing on run-off insurance, a growing market estimated to be worth $90 billion.
It currently employs 26 people in the north.
Riverstone grew out of the Toronto-based Fairfax Financial Holdings and is now an international enterprise in its own right.
The insurance and IT services company has no connection to New York-based Riverstone Credit Partners, which currently has a $140m loan facility with Harland & Wolff.
Riverstone said its Belfast operation is set to expand through the development of a new re-insurance platform called Orbit.
It anticipates the new platform could secure in excess of £3m additional growth for the company by 2029.
“Investment in technology and innovation is central to the continued growth and future profitability of RiverStone,” said Belfast site director, Graham Reid.
“This investment reflects the confidence and value proposition of our phenomenal talent in the Belfast operation which has become a centre of R&D, application modernisation and AI expertise. “This, alongside the support from Invest NI, was instrumental in choosing Northern Ireland to make this investment.”
He added: “Our new platform will offer commercial advantages by carrying out the complete processing required for assumed claims handling, while it will also be engineered as a new product for sale into the global reinsurance industry.”
Invest NI said it has offered £461,092 in financial support to Riverstone to secure the project for Northern Ireland.
It said the offer was made in the face of competition from other potential locations.
“This project through a combination of the availability of talented software engineers and Invest NI’s support secured it for Northern Ireland,” said Invest NI’s innovation director, Dr Vicky Kell.
“This investment in R&D will help advance the cloud-native and AI skills of its team here in Belfast and aligns with the ambitions of Northern Ireland’s Innovation Strategy and Invest NI’s own strong focus on innovation and skills development,” she added.
“It will also contribute to building the reputation of Northern Ireland’s software sector through the association with a major player in the global insurance market and its global customer base.”
Invest NI said its R&D support has been part funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the Investment for Growth and Jobs Northern Ireland (2014–2020) Programme.
