What is Insurtech?

Insurtech is the use of technology to change how insurance is designed, sold, underwritten, administered or claimed, and the name given to the companies built around that aim. The word combines "insurance" and "technology" on the same pattern as fintech.

This guide is for insurance operations, IT and product teams. It covers the main categories of insurtech company, how insurtechs differ from insurance software vendors, how they work with insurers, MGAs and brokers, what insurtech looks like in the UK and the London Market and how funding has moved.

What insurtech means and where the term came from

Insurtech followed fintech. As technology start-ups began to challenge banks in payments, lending and investment, the same model was applied to insurance, and "insurtech" became the label for start-ups in the sector and, more loosely, for any technology that changes how insurance works.

The term covers a wide range. A comparison site that sends a customer's answers to dozens of insurers, a start-up that writes contents cover through an app, an MGA that prices cyber risk using scans of a company's internet-facing systems and a company that reads claims documents automatically are all called insurtechs. What they share is that technology sits at the centre of the business model.

In everyday market usage the word also describes a direction of travel. When an underwriter says a product needs "an insurtech approach", they usually mean digital distribution, automated underwriting rules and data-driven pricing, whoever builds it.

The main categories

Distribution and embedded insurance companies change how cover reaches customers. They include price comparison and digital broking platforms, and embedded insurance providers that place cover inside another company's buying journey, such as gadget cover at an electronics checkout, travel cover on a flight booking or warranty cover at a car dealer. The insurtech provides the technology and often the product design. An insurer or MGA usually carries the risk.

Full-stack digital insurers hold their own licence and carry risk on their own balance sheet, with technology built in house across pricing, policy administration and claims. They take the most regulatory and capital burden of any insurtech model, which is why there are fewer of them than other types.

MGAs built on technology are a common insurtech model in the UK. A managing general agent underwrites on behalf of an insurer under delegated authority, so it can launch without its own regulatory capital. Technology-led MGAs use data and automated rules to price and issue cover in niches such as cyber, small business, specialist motor or parametric weather cover, while the capacity comes from insurers or Lloyd's syndicates.

Parametric cover shows how far the model can move from traditional underwriting. A parametric policy pays a fixed sum when a measured trigger is met, such as rainfall below a set level at a named weather station or an earthquake above a set magnitude within a set distance. The claim is settled from the data feed. Nobody adjusts the loss, which is only practical when policy, data and payment systems are connected.

Core systems and infrastructure companies build the platforms other insurers run on: policy administration, rating, billing, claims and the connections between them. Many are delivered as software as a service.

Data and analytics companies supply information and models used in underwriting and pricing. Examples include property data that returns a building's construction, flood risk and rebuild cost from an address, telematics that scores driving behaviour, and catastrophe and cyber risk models. Their products usually reach the insurer as API calls made during the quote.

Claims technology companies work on the other end of the policy. They provide digital first notification of loss, photo and video assessment for motor and property damage, fraud detection, automated payments and supplier management. A growing share use AI, including agentic AI that carries out multi-step tasks such as gathering documents and drafting decisions for a handler to approve.

Insurtech versus insurance software vendors: how the terms overlap

The boundary is blurred. Traditional insurance software vendors have sold policy administration, claims and billing systems to insurers for decades, typically as licensed software installed on the insurer's own servers. Newer core system providers sell the same functions as cloud platforms, and they are often grouped with insurtechs because they are newer, cloud-based and built for digital distribution.

In practice, "insurtech" tends to be used for companies that are newer, venture-funded or customer-facing, and "insurance software vendor" for companies that sell systems to insurers. Many companies fit both descriptions. For a buyer, the useful questions are what a company does, whom it sells to and whether it carries risk.

The insurtech ecosystem: how insurtechs partner with insurers, MGAs and brokers

Most insurtechs depend on established market participants for at least one thing: capacity, distribution, data or customers. That dependence shapes how they partner.

Insurers provide capacity to technology-led MGAs and embedded insurance providers, and buy technology from data, claims and core system insurtechs. Some invest directly through corporate venture arms. MGAs combine both roles: they buy technology to run their business and often present themselves as insurtechs to brokers and capacity providers. Brokers use insurtech platforms for digital placement, comparison and client portals, and some partner with embedded insurance providers to reach customers they could not reach before.

For the established party, a partnership usually means due diligence on more than the technology. An insurer giving capacity to a technology-led MGA will test its underwriting expertise, claims arrangements, financial standing and data reporting, just as it would for any MGA. An insurer buying technology will test security, the vendor's ability to support the system for years and how the product connects to what the insurer already runs. Much of the practical work in a partnership sits at the integration and reporting stage, where the insurtech's systems meet the insurer's.

The connections between these parties are mostly made through APIs. A typical embedded insurance arrangement links the retailer's checkout, the insurtech's product and pricing, the MGA's policy administration and the insurer's reporting, each through its own interface. Our article on the insurance technology ecosystem covers how these pieces connect, and our glossary entry on digital transformation in insurance covers the wider change programmes insurers run alongside them.

Insurtech in the UK and the London Market

Two parts of the UK market shape its insurtech sector. The delegated authority model lets new MGAs write business on established insurers' capacity, and the regulator has run formal routes for testing new propositions. The Financial Conduct Authority opened its regulatory sandbox to applications in May 2016, describing it as a safe space where businesses can test innovative products, services, business models and delivery mechanisms with appropriate consumer protection.

The London Market has its own route. Lloyd's set up the Lloyd's Lab in 2018 as an accelerator for insurtechs working with the market. At the Lab's five-year event in October 2023, Lloyd's chief executive John Neal said more than 100 start-ups had been through it and that its graduates had raised about $1 billion in capital.

Insurtech in the London Market tends to focus on business-to-business problems: placement platforms, delegated authority data and bordereaux management, specialty risk models and claims processing for complex commercial losses. Much of that work depends on common data standards such as those published by ACORD.

How insurtech funding and the market have changed

Investment in insurtech is now driven by artificial intelligence. Gallagher Re's Global InsurTech Report for Q2 2026, published in August 2026, recorded global insurtech funding of $2.44 billion in the quarter, the highest quarterly total since the second quarter of 2022. It reported that 99.1% of the quarter's funding went to AI-focused companies and that early-stage funding fell by 51.8% from the previous quarter.

The same report counted 27 technology investments by insurers and reinsurers in the quarter, down from 32 in the first quarter of 2026.

For a sceptical view of where the sector is going, see our reality check on the future of insurtech.

How this applies to policy administration

Whatever an insurtech does at the front end, the policy still has to be issued, adjusted, renewed, billed and reported somewhere. For technology-led MGAs and embedded insurance providers that means a policy administration platform with configurable products and APIs that partners can connect to, which is why core platforms are the infrastructure much of the insurtech market is built on. Genasys is a SaaS insurance platform covering policy administration, claims management and billing, described on its product page.