Liberty Syndicates, a subsidiary of Liberty Mutual Group, and Sciemus unveiled a new satellite insurance offering intended to save money for “good” satellite operators, the companies announced.

The companies plan to differentiate between good and bad satellite risks using a model developed by Sciemus and Qinetiq. The SpaceRAT risk assessment tool is designed to facilitate fast, accurate and time sensitive risk assessment for the insurance of satellites as well as enable claims resolutions, the companies said. “For too long good satellite companies have been subsidizing poor performers,” Andre Finn, CEO and co-founder of Sciemus, said. “We are delighted that this new partnership with Liberty could reduce premiums by as much as $10 million per year for the best in breed operators.”

Liberty and its reinsurers will initially provide capacity of up to $250 million for the Libsat consortium, with an expansion to $400 million planned “throughout the next few years” to cover operators of communications satellites. The level of financing will allow Libsat to underwrite even the largest satellite fleet due to combining the available financial capacity with technical analysis in place of experience based analysis to determine risk, the companies said.

“This represents the largest single source of new capacity made to the industry, which hitherto has suffered from an inability to differentiate between good and bad operators,” Sean Dalton, CEO of Liberty, said in a statement. “The model will enable differentiation between good and bad risk within the satellite sector and price to reflect the risk. Operators will be able to see the benefit in terms of significant cost savings and certainty.”