01
How It
Started.
As a leader in early blockchain organizations, and the first full-time blockchain hire at the world’s largest custodian bank, J. Gdanski understood the technology and the institutional environment like few others.
With experience at McKinsey and running consulting and insurance businesses, Raymond’s instincts drew him to blockchain. In 2016 he ran the world’s first Insurance & Blockchain conference in North America.
It was clear to both that insurance for crypto did not work at all. It didn’t understand the risk and it wasn’t well priced.
Evertas was born from a shared desire: to create insurance for this new risk, based on timeless standards and principles.
02
Insurance
LOLs.
People frequently laughed at us in 2017. Crypto and insurance seemed an impossible coupling.
Today crypto is on a path to becoming unremarkable, just another piece of our financial system.
Now people see that trust is the missing ingredient. So for us this means less laughs, and more nods.
03
Channelling
JFK?
Crypto offers everyone new financial choices. Our goal is to make sure people can participate safely.
We didn’t choose crypto insurance because it is easy, we chose to do it because it is hard.
The potential of this new financial wave, and the role insurance should play, made it impossible to ignore.
04
Move-slow-
and-analyse-
things.
We are not your typical start-up. The move-fast-and-break-things mantra doesn’t work to understand a new, multi-faceted risk.
It’s painstaking, microscopic work, but after four years in dark rooms we fundamentally understand it, and price it accurately. This is insurance, unchanging.
It’s why the largest and most sophisticated carriers in the crypto space engage us, and we support about 30% of underwriting globally.
01
Who We
Work With.
- Retail brokers and carriers
- Custodians, exchanges, crypto funds, traditional financial institutions, high net worth individuals, family office, and market utilities.
02
What We
Offer.
- We provide insurance products and risk transfer solutions.
- Typically coverage requires a $1m+ threshold.
03
Why We’re
Different.
- We pioneered crypto risk and it’s been our sole focus since 2017. Our expertise makes us uniquely qualified to identify, assess, and score the risk.
- We’ve created the only full lifecycle insurance available; a world leading underwriting framework, bespoke crypto policy form and claims handling.
The
Team.
We combine blockchain expertise with institutional understanding and insurance leadership.
Leadership
J. Gdanski
CEO & Founder
J. Gdanski is a leader in the enterprise blockchain space and was one of the first people in the world to work on institutional custody for crypto. He has presented to regulators, legislators and politicians around the world, and to Fortune 50 leaders and their risk committees.
He was an early, significant contributor to blockchain consortia including R3 and Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, of which he was a founding member. He was an integral part of the first enterprise blockchain RFP and has worked on numerous blockchain-based systems. He was the first dedicated hire in the space for a bulge bracket bank and the world’s largest custodian bank.
As CEO, J. Gdanski has led Evertas’ technical development and underwriting, as well as secured funding rounds.
Leadership
Raymond Zenkich
President & Founder
Raymond specializes in the distributed future and the intersection of cryptoassets, financial services, and insurance. He is an experienced technology executive with a proven ability to integrate dynamic problem solving skills, technology depth and entrepreneurial drive.
His 25+ year career includes McKinsey, Accenture, and running consulting, SaaS, and insurance businesses. He has served as an Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University School of Law and been recognized by both U.S. and Canadian Federal courts as a qualified technical expert witness.
As President, Raymond has led the development and implementation of Evertas’ overall insurance offering and helped secure partnerships with insurers, reinsurers, and brokers.
Leadership
Mark Yusko
Director
Mark is the Founder, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Morgan Creek Capital Management, who manage nearly $2 billion in discretionary and non‐discretionary assets. He is also the Managing Partner of Morgan Creek Digital Assets.
Mark was CIO and Founder of UNC Management Company (UNCMC), the Endowment investment office for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Senior Investment Director for the University of Notre Dame Investment Office.
He has been at the forefront of institutional investing throughout his career. An early investor in alternative asset classes at Notre Dame, he brought the Endowment Model of investing to UNC, which contributed to significant performance gains for the Endowment.
At Evertas Mark sits on the board as an Investor Director.
Product & Services
Ty Sagalow
Product
Ty is a 38-year veteran of the insurance industry and a highly influential professional, developing an unprecedented number of new products for the world’s largest insurance companies and startups.
He has held a range of senior executive roles with AIG, Zurich America and Tower Group. He was founder and Chief Insurance Officer of both Lemonade Inc. and Assurely. He is on the board of Relm Insurance Ltd and advises other companies.
Ty is one of the industry’s most sought-after insurance expert witnesses. He is an author and speaker, and has spoken before various tech, legal and insurance forums including at the White House, Department of Homeland Security and Congress.
Ty’s focuses on our underwriting and insurance product development.
Product & Services
Robert Chamberlain
Head of 5i Services
Robert is a strategy and innovation professional passionate about the creative application of technologies to clients’ most pressing intelligence problems.
His experience includes Director of Operations for a Big Four firm’s commercial intelligence center. At PwC was instrumental in establishing market intelligence and was a member of the corporate intelligence practice at IBM.
Robert leads our 5i Services group, responsible for delivery and overseeing compliance operations, claims forensics and investigations. The team focuses on the risks associated with corruption, sanctions, conflict, and the vast array of regulatory, policy and business hazards that come with operations in foreign markets.
Product & Services
Ryan Lackey
Chief Security Officer
Ryan has been deeply involved in computer security since discovering the Internet, NSA Rainbow Books, and the Cypherpunks mailing list in the early 1990s.
After leaving MIT to co-found an early digital token startup in Anguilla he set up the world’s first datahaven — on the self-declared independent state of Sealand — to host early digital currency and related projects. Subsequently he spent 7 years working on Iraq and Afghanistan bootstrapping a defense contracting business, working with government and private clients.
Ryan co-founded CryptoSeal, a security technology company developing virtual machine security solutions, which was acquired by Cloudflare. His recent focus has been in cryptocurrency security and infrastructure, serving as Tezos CSO and Foundation Board member, along with a number of other projects.
Product & Services
Deian Stefan
Security
Deian Stefan is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego, where he co-leads the Security and Programming Systems groups.
His research lies at the intersection of security and programming languages; he is particularly interested in building secure systems that are deployed in production. Stefan was also a co-founder of Intrinsic, a runtime security start-up acquired by VMWare in 2019. Stefan received a B.E. in Electrical Engineering from Cooper Union in 2009, M.E. in Electrical Engineering from Cooper Union in 2011, M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2016. His work has been recognized by multiple awards, including distinguished paper awards (POPL 2019, USENIX Security 2020, ICFP 2020, POPL 2021), research highlights (USENIX ;login: 2020, SIGPLAN Research Highlight 2021), and NSF CAREER award (2021).
Operations
Stuart Clare, CFA
Chief Financial Officer
Stuart joined Evertas in October 2021 and is based in Bermuda.
His career has primarily been in (re)insurance and includes roles such as global head of investment operations for a $35 billion portfolio, management of finance, reinsurance and claims functions and advisory for new startups.
Prior companies include AXA XL, Attorneys’ Liability Assurance Society, Aon and KPMG.
Formal education includes an MBA from Queens University and a Bachelor of Business degree from Monash University. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst and a member of The Institute of Directors.
Operations
Melanie Kaneas, CPA
Finance
Melanie is a professional with over 30 years corporate experience. She is a CPA (OH) with an MBA Finance and is a QuickBooks Pro Certified Advisor.
Melanie was VP Finance with Spectra Marketing, a leader in consumer targeting, prior to its merger with AC Nielsen. Previously she was in Internal Audit, Corporate Planning and as Controller of a joint venture start-up with Diebold, Inc., a manufacturer of ATMs and banking equipment.
Operations
April Mazac
Design
April is a design maverick with extensive design experience across digital and print.
Our
Advisors.
Chami Akmeemana
Chami is the CEO of Convergence.Tech, a new breed consulting & tech company that fuses business, social/environmental impact and good technology. As part of Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz’s B Team Australasia he helps companies adopt emerging tech. He sits on the advisory committee of Supply Chain Canada and the Finance Advisory Board at the Global Alliance for a Sustainable Planet.
His experience includes four successful entrepreneurial ventures and serving as Research Director Blockchain Research Institute, Fintech Advisor to the Ontario Securities Commission and Managing Director, Fintech and Blockchain at the Global Risk Institute.
Chami’s passions are food, cycling, travel and empowering youth through education.
Frank Fanzilli
Frank is an experienced Board Member and Advisor, in both public and private companies.
Global experience in the areas of strategy, operations, and technology as well as investment and M&A for world-class companies such as Sapience Analytics, Credit Suisse, CommVault, 1010Data, EnterpriseDB, Calypso and many others, as well as with technology thought leaders such as The Linux Foundation and Ridge Ventures.
Susan Joseph
Susan Joseph, a JD/MBA and former General Counsel, is CEO/Founder of Healthrends.ai, an NSF grant awardee, Executive Director, Fintech at Cornell, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University, and Executive Director (pro bono) of Diversity in Blockchain-a 501(c)(3).
She has been consulting and advising in law, blockchain and fintech for the past five years in the areas of digital assets, cryptocurrencies, insurance, enterprise distributed ledgers, ESG (climate and diversity), identity and privacy, and other issues across financial services, insurance and supply chain.
Susan was formerly the B3i North America Representative (Insurance Consortium). She created and ran Blockchain Working Groups for Global Insurers and was the first Executive Director of ID2020. Susan is a part of the World Economic Forum Expert Network and runs the Women in FinTech network on LinkedIn.
Sandra Ro
Sandra is a proponent for ‘human-centric tech’ and focuses on emerging technologies for sustainability, access and resiliency, particularly in financial systems. She currently serves as the CEO of the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC) and is an angel investor in emerging technologies, Board member, advisor, keynote speaker and cofounder of several start-ups, non-profits, and key blockchain industry networks.
She is currently Board director of Global Digital Finance (UK) NYS Senate appointee on the New York State Digital Currency Task Force, Fintech Advisory Council of Astana International Financial Center (AIFC Kazakhstan), Board Treasurer of BitGive Foundation, member of EU Public Funds and New Green Economy Consortia, Chair of Open Impact Foundation (Switzerland), Advisory Board of Filecoin Foundation, Health Tech Chair of Yale Alumni Health Network (YAHN), and member of World Economic Forum’s Digital Currency Governance Consortium (DCGC), US Department of State Speakers Bureau, Standards, International Securities Services Association (ISSA).
Whilst at CME Group, she founded and led Digitization, developed the CME CF Bitcoin pricing indices, followed by the CME Bitcoin Futures and DLT solutions. Ro was a founding member of Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA Board), Post Trade Distributed Ledger (PTDL) Group, Linux Foundation, Hyperledger, and GBBC Board. She holds six patents across derivatives, crypto and indices.
Scott Robinson
Scott is an entrepreneur and investor. Currently the founder & CEO of Sellout, a compliance company, and an angel investor in Nabis and Cognito.
Scott previously co-founded Plug & Play’s Fintech accelerator, where he led investments in Blockdaemon, Flutterwave, SFOX and dozens more.
Maya Zehavi
Maya started her career in fintech, leading a national IT project at Bank Leumi, and later as an PE analyst focusing on structured loans.
She is a crypto veteran, having worked in the space since 2015 focusing on enterprise blockchain and privacy, later turning to advising on crypto projects.
Currently Maya is focused on the crypto investments both on the traditional venture side & DeFi opportunities across the board.
