2025: the year of data and AI innovation in UK Insurtech
The UK insurance sector, long celebrated for its resilience and innovation, has stepped into 2025 with an unparalleled focus on technology-driven transformation.
Nowhere is this more evident than within the Lloyd’s Market, where Insurtech companies are redefining underwriting, claims and customer experiences through digital innovation.
Tackling operational efficiency and processing capacity for claims and other workflows remains a key focus for the industry, one that is well-suited to the advancements we’re seeing with today’s Large Language Models (LLMs) and agents.1
With Microsoft’s cloud and AI technologies underpinning many of these Insurtech solutions, innovation is accelerating in three crucial areas:
- Transforming the policyholder experience
- Modernising risk and compliance
- Transforming core insurance systems
The result is that Insurtech innovators are boosting productivity, accelerating time to market and enhancing collaboration and engagement.
As the industry adapts to new economic realities, regulatory pressures and customer expectations, Insurtech companies exemplify the innovative spirit that positions 2025 as a big year for digital transformation. A recent generative AI study2 for the insurance market suggests that nine out of 10 insurers plan to invest in generative AI over the coming year in their bid to achieve more.
Transforming risk placement and underwriting
Notwithstanding their unique respective operations, PPL and InsurX are both leaders in driving value-chain efficiency and modernising processes that support smooth risk placing and processing in the London Market.
Enhancing collaboration
PPL is advancing the London Market’s digital placing capability with a new trading hub built on Microsoft technologies. The move will speed the company’s transition from a document-led, administrative placing process to a a new e-trading and data hub built on Microsoft’s cloud and AI technologies.
The collaboration is set to enable:
- Powerful and actionable broker and carrier insight delivered by bespoke PPL Copilot prompts. These will empower users to compare, analyse and gain insight in real time to inform next actions.
- End-to-end trading data housed in an intelligent Microsoft Fabric-powered data hub. This will provide PPL clients with easy access to structured, secure and rich data to inform and support business decisions.
These advancements create an agile digital marketplace that fosters collaboration and efficiency at the heart of the Lloyd’s Market.
Revolutionising underwriting
InsurX ’s mission is to modernise the complex $1.2 trillion commercial underwriting industry for the 21st century. Part of the Lloyd’s Lab accelerator programme in 2022, the company has developed a two-sided digital exchange that allows brokers and insurers to algorithmically trade insurance risks.
The live exchange now includes over 50 enterprise insurers and brokers, and is set to trade $1 billion in premiums by 2026. By leveraging Microsoft Azure, InsurX’s technology enables brokers and underwriters to:
- Define risk appetite: underwriters can tailor algorithmic rules to their precise risk criteria.
- Match risks to rules: brokers find capacity in minutes as the InsurX matching engine cross-references their submissions against rules.
- Sign contracts automatically: InsurX then binds policies and delivers high-quality reporting to all parties.
Ultimately, InsurX seeks to streamline insurance risk-processing, making it faster, more efficient and more cost-effective for brokers and underwriters.
Outwards reinsurance reinvented
Cenata is a pioneering business focused on outwards reinsurance and committed to driving change and improving operational outcomes at a global level. Cenata has developed a game-changing solution called CenataSure, an Azure-based outwards reinsurance management platform, which underpins and futureproofs its growing client base.
By leveraging Microsoft Azure data services, the CenataSure platform enables insurers to better manage reinsurance risks and compliance, and leverage opportunity across the London and international markets.
The platform delivers powerful insight from extremely large insurance datasets, enabling business performance optimisation. With Azure CosmosDB and Synapse Analytics in play, Cenata can also scale exceptional performance for organisations of all sizes by enabling:
- Granular insight: a real-time picture of reinsurance premium and claims position for proactive decision making, all to outstanding levels of detail.
- Complex calculation automation: detailed automation at scale, delivering frictionless straight-through processing with no manual intervention.
- Regulatory compliance: automating statutory reporting, such as QMA, SRS and schedule F reports, to streamline operations.
Cenata partners with global services organisations such as Synpulse, a ceded insurance specialist, to deliver large-scale transformation projects – and at the core of each project is CenataSure.
Transforming the policyholder experience
In the digital-first world, customers demand hyper-personalised experiences. Peppercorn AI, powered by Microsoft Azure, has emerged as a leader in delivering these tailored experiences for insurance customers through its specialist conversational AI platform, Pipr.
By leveraging Azure’s Cognitive and Azure Open AI services, the Pipr platform can:
- Provide instant, highly intuitive responses to customer inquiries through AI, powered by its digital conversational assistant.
- Amend and update policy information within individual customer profiles in real-time.
- Deliver highly personalised guidance based on customer needs and behaviours.
PeppercornAI is also leveraging generative AI to improve risk selection for the insurance provider. While recognising possible quote manipulation, it also provides a better informed, personalised customer experience – a win-win strategy.
The UK Insurtech sector remains strong
The UK is currently home to the world’s second largest Insurtech cluster and has produced eight “unicorns” (companies valued at more than $1 billion). This is more than the rest of Europe combined.3 More widely, the sector makes a significant contribution of almost £5 billion to the UK economy (GDP) and supports 60,000 jobs across the UK.
This impressive achievement positions Insurtech not only as a vital economic contributor but also as a global leader in innovation. By continuing to harness Microsoft AI and data-driven solutions, the sector is well-positioned to drive growth, create jobs and shape the future of insurance.
For its part, Microsoft is committed to providing efficient tools and platforms to advance industry innovation and empower strong collaboration for both physical and digital interactions.
Discover the power of partnership
ISV Success, part of our Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Programme, will give you all the support and guidance you need on the Microsoft Cloud. You can also gain free Azure credits, developer tools, app consultations and much more.
If you’re an Insurtech company looking for support with AI innovation and go-to-market, please reach out to our UK ISV team or find out more by visiting the Microsoft ISV Hub.
Footnotes
2 Your journey to a GenAI future: An insurer’s strategic path to success
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About the author
As the Insurtech partner lead for Microsoft UK, George helps Insurance B2B software companies innovate with Microsoft’s Cloud and AI platforms, and reach new customers together. He has more than 13 years’ experience working in the Microsoft Partner ecosystem, most recently helping Fintechs drive successful commercial partnerships with Microsoft.
