InsuranceAIITC Vegas 2026September 2026
Skip the Paper Era: Braven’s Carlos Chávez on Whether AI Is Latin America’s Insurance Leapfrog
China skipped credit cards and went straight to digital wallets. At ITC Vegas, Braven co-founder and CEO Carlos Chávez took the stage to argue Latin American insurance can make the same jump.
LAS VEGAS Latin America’s weak spots in insurance may be its biggest advantage.
That was the premise of Carlos Chávez’s Mic Drop session in the ITC LATAM Program. The region has low insurance penetration, thin distribution and almost no legacy infrastructure to protect. The session made the case that this is the setup for a leapfrog: skip the broker-and-paper era entirely and go straight to AI underwriting and embedded distribution, the way China skipped credit cards for wallets.
Chávez is building toward that future. He is co-founder and CEO of Braven, formerly Sytrex, an AI platform for specialty insurance and reinsurance. Braven works with carriers, reinsurers, brokers and MGAs in eight countries across the U.S., Latin America and the London Market. It processes more than $850 million in gross written premium and has launched more than eight programs across commercial and specialty lines.
Before Braven, Chávez founded and exited a fintech startup. Born and raised in Colombia and now based in San Francisco, he is active in Silicon Valley’s Latin American founder community, which gave the talk’s argument a personal edge: he has seen the region leapfrog once before, in payments.
