InsTech - insurance & innovation with Matthew Grant & Robin Merttens

Introduction: Growth equity can open the door to the next stage of an MGA’s growth. But the bigger question is how that capital can be used to strengthen underwriting, accelerate technology and build a delegated business that can compete at greater scale. Joining Robin Merttens on the podcast, Rebecca Ince, Chief Operating Officer at Carbon Underwriting, and Mark Oldroyd, Chief Technology Officer at Carbon Underwriting, explain what comes next following Carbon’s growth equity investment from FTV Capital. Rebecca explains why finding the right investment partner was about more than funding. With Carbon growing from £150 million of premium in 2023 to £450 million this year, its next phase requires greater investment in technology alongside ambitions to expand further into the US. FTV’s experience across financial technology and US insurance made both areas important factors in the decision. The discussion explores how that investment could accelerate Carbon’s technology strategy, particularly its proprietary Graphene analytics platform. Mark explains why centralised, structured data provides a strong foundation for AI and where the technology is already creating practical value, including claims matching. He also argues that MGAs need to distinguish between technology they should build themselves and capabilities they can buy, while protecting the underwriting expertise, workflows and intellectual property that differentiate them. They also discuss why bordereaux are unlikely to disappear anytime soon, despite widespread appetite for richer and more frequent data exchange. Rather than waiting for the entire ecosystem to change, Mark explains why the opportunity is to remove friction from collecting and standardising data, allowing insurers to focus more attention on the insights and decisions that come from it. Looking ahead, Rebecca explains why Carbon plans to remain focused on delegated underwriting while expanding into new classes and geographies, particularly the US. They also explore how analytics can help identify rate-adequate opportunities as conditions soften and what it takes to protect culture as a business rapidly scales beyond 100 people. In this episode you’ll learn: Why Carbon chose growth equity and what it looked for beyond capital when selecting an investment partner How centralised, structured data creates a stronger foundation for applying AI across underwriting and claims Where AI is already delivering practical value within Carbon’s insurance workflows How MGAs can decide which technology capabilities to build and which to buy Why proprietary underwriting expertise, workflows and data are becoming increasingly important sources of differentiation Why bordereaux are unlikely to disappear from delegated underwriting in the next three to five years What is preventing carriers and MGAs from exchanging richer, more frequent data Why Carbon sees the US as its next major growth opportunity How analytics can help underwriters find rate-adequate business as market conditions soften What rapidly growing MGAs can do to protect their culture as they scale Hear more from Carbon at The Golden Age of MGAs Carbon is sponsoring InsTech’s upcoming The Golden Age of MGAs? Building to win in any market cycle event on 24 September. Rebecca will moderate the Capital diversification and the resilient MGA panel, joined by Carbon Co-Founder and Managing Director Ben Laidlaw, CFC Underwriting’s Philippa Berry and Gallagher Re’s Jane Fenton. They’ll explore practical approaches to multi-carrier strategies, long-term capacity agreements, fronting, reinsurance access and patient capital structures that can withstand a full market cycle. Find out more and register here. Career opportunities at Carbon Carbon is continuing to grow its team and is looking for people interested in helping shape the future of delegated underwriting across underwriting, technology, data and operations. View current opport

Introduction Insurance has never been short of technology promises. From Blueprint 2 to successive waves of digital transformation, the ambition has often outpaced the results. According to Elizabeth Wooliston, that's beginning to change. Joining Robin Merttens on the podcast, Elizabeth draws on more than 30 years in the London Market to explain why the current wave of intelligent automation feels fundamentally different. It's not simply that AI has become more capable. Market conditions have shifted, brokers have embedded digital strategies into their operating models and carriers are under increasing pressure to respond to risks faster without compromising underwriting quality. The discussion explores where automation is delivering value today, from follow markets and facilities to the far more complex challenge of open market placements and policy servicing. Elizabeth also explains why organisations should think beyond AI itself, arguing that success depends on structured data, specialist insurance knowledge and governance rather than simply adopting the latest large language model. They also discuss how attitudes towards technology are changing across the market. Instead of replacing underwriters, intelligent automation is increasingly being viewed as a way of removing repetitive administration, allowing experienced professionals to spend more time applying judgement, developing client relationships and mentoring the next generation of talent. In this episode you'll learn: Why Elizabeth believes the London Market has reached a genuine inflection point for technology adoption How brokers and carriers are creating new momentum for digital risk placement Where intelligent automation is already improving underwriting workflows Why open market placements represent the next major challenge for AI The trade-offs insurers should consider when deciding whether to build or buy AI capabilities What organisations need in place before agentic AI can be deployed successfully Why governance and insurance-specific expertise are becoming competitive advantages How changing expectations across the workforce are influencing technology adoption What Artificial's recent expansion says about the growing demand for intelligent insurance infrastructure If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Robin Merttens on LinkedIn. Sign up to the InsTech newsletter for a fresh view on the world every Wednesday morning.

In this episode, Robin Merttens is joined by Martha Dreiling, Co-founder and President of Reserv, to explore how AI is actually transforming claims, and why the biggest breakthroughs are happening in places most people overlook. With a background spanning FinTech, InsurTech and risk analytics, Martha brings a practical perspective on how data and technology can improve decision-making, not just automate existing processes. At Reserv, she’s helping build a claims model that combines operational efficiency with quality, while challenging long-standing assumptions about how claims should be handled and paid for. In this conversation, Martha shares: Why the most valuable AI in claims is “boring but brilliant”, not flashy How continuous monitoring is quietly improving claims outcomes at scale Why efficiency alone is no longer enough, and what it takes to deliver quality alongside it How claims data is becoming a critical input into underwriting and pricing decisions The challenge of legacy systems and why data fragmentation still holds the industry back What real AI adoption looks like, and why execution is starting to outpace strategy How AI is exposing misaligned incentives in traditional time-and-expense TPA models Why insurers need to rethink how they pay for claims services in an AI-driven world The shift from technology transformation to human and workflow transformation How reducing administrative burden can refocus claims handlers on empathy and judgement Why better claims operations ultimately matter for affordability and customer outcomes If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Robin Merttens on LinkedIn. Sign up to the InsTech newsletter for a fresh view on the world every Wednesday morning.

In this episode, Robin Merttens moderates a panel with Tessa Wardle of QBE, Emily Stanford of Gallagher and Jonathan Spry of Envelop Risk, recorded live at the InsTech London event Some lead, others follow: Smart underwriting and broking strategies for 2026. As algorithmic underwriting and portfolio solutions reshape the London Market, insurers, brokers and reinsurers are rethinking how risk is placed, followed and managed at scale. Facilities are multiplying, digital trading models are emerging and data is becoming the foundation of increasingly automated underwriting decisions. Drawing on perspectives from underwriting, broking and reinsurance, the panel explores what portfolio underwriting really looks like in practice today. They discuss how facilities are evolving, why broker strategies are changing and what it takes to run sustainable portfolio capacity in a market that is becoming more digital and more data-driven. At the centre of the discussion is a growing tension between ambition and infrastructure. The market wants faster placement, smarter capital allocation and more algorithmic decision-making, yet many firms are still wrestling with fragmented data, legacy systems and inconsistent standards. In this conversation, Tessa, Emily and Jonathan share: Why portfolio solutions have become one of the fastest-growing models in the London Market How brokers are evolving their placement strategies as facilities and pre-placed capacity expand Why selecting the right portfolio leader is critical for long-term facility performance How improving data quality is becoming a prerequisite for digital trading and algorithmic underwriting Why incentives across brokers, carriers and reinsurers matter when it comes to better data How AI is reshaping risk, creating new liability exposures and changing how insurers analyse emerging threats Why capital providers are increasingly demanding greater transparency and portfolio insight If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Robin Merttens on LinkedIn. Sign up to the InsTech newsletter for a fresh view on the world every Wednesday morning.

In this episode, Robin Merttens sits down with Frank Perkins, CEO and Co-founder of inari, to explore what it really takes to build and scale a modern MGA in 2026. From founding an insurance business himself to leading a technology company serving specialist MGAs across Europe, Frank brings a rare dual perspective. He understands both the pressure of getting premium through the door and the responsibility of building systems that underwriters actually want to use. As private equity capital accelerates into the sector and niche, digital-first MGAs proliferate across continental Europe, the conversation turns to speed, integration and the quiet evolution of the underwriting workbench. In this conversation, Frank shares: Why technology literacy is now firmly in the hands of business users, not just IT departments How the rise of highly specialised MGAs is reshaping what underwriting platforms need to deliver Why “rip and replace” transformation programmes are giving way to orchestration and coexistence How AI is materially accelerating integrations and onboarding, cutting rollout times from months to days The difference between generic AI tooling and insurance-specific intelligence Why speed of execution is becoming a defining competitive advantage What a tightening market cycle will mean for operational efficiency Why continental Europe may offer the next major growth wave for MGAs How culture and domain expertise can matter as much as code in a crowded market If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Robin Merttens on LinkedIn. Sign up to the InsTech newsletter for a fresh view on the world every Wednesday morning.

What actually makes automated and enhanced underwriting work in practice? In this episode, three early movers in automated underwriting share hard-earned lessons from building digital underwriting propositions that have survived real market cycles. Rather than theory or hype, this conversation digs into where technology genuinely creates advantage, where it does not, and how underwriting judgement remains central even in highly algorithmic models. Drawing on experience across cyber, US property and digital facilities, the panel explores why complexity, not commoditisation, is often where automation delivers the greatest edge. From AI-driven cyber underwriting to high-cat surplus lines property and digitally distributed specialty products, each speaker explains how they chose their focus and what they learned along the way. Key themes include the role of data discipline in sustaining AI-led underwriting, why platform design matters more than speed to market, and how underwriters’ roles are shifting from generalists to specialists embedded in algorithmic decision making. The discussion also tackles unstructured data, submission quality and why “no data, no deal” may become a defining principle of future underwriting models. What you’ll learn in this episode: Why complex risks can be better suited to automated and augmented underwriting than simple, commoditised ones How AI and machine learning are being applied in live underwriting decisions, not just analytics The importance of volume, homogeneity and risk differentiation when building algorithmic models Lessons from re-platforming early digital products and avoiding long-term technical debt How generative AI is changing data cleaning, exposure management and submission handling What enhanced underwriting means for underwriter skills, careers and decision making Featuring perspectives from Marek Shafer of Vave, Tom Squires of AEGIS London and Jonathan Spry of Envelop Risk, moderated by Matthew Grant of InsTech. You can also watch the video version of this panel here. If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Matthew Grant on LinkedIn. Sign up to the InsTech newsletter for a fresh view on the world every Wednesday morning.

In this episode, Robin Merttens is joined by Tobi Schneider, Sector Engagement Lead for Financial Services & FinTech at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, to unpack one of the most ambitious research initiatives currently shaping the future of AI risk in insurance. Backed by UKRI and developed in collaboration with AXA Group and three leading universities, the project aims to build a foundational blueprint for how insurers can understand, audit and underwrite emerging AI risks. Tobi shares why the shift from traditional to generative and agentic AI has outpaced current risk frameworks, leaving insurers exposed to risks that are poorly defined, difficult to monitor and impossible to price using historic loss data. He explains how his team is exploring dynamic underwriting models, parametric solutions and novel assurance techniques like LLM-based judges and automated red teaming, all with the goal of enabling safer, more accountable AI adoption. Ahead of the Agentic AI Half Day event, hosted in collaboration with AI Risk, Tobi Schneider and Lukasz Szpruch wrote an article The New Frontier: Managing and insuring generative and agentic AI risks, further exploring this topic. In this conversation, Tobi shares: Why AI systems that function “correctly” can still produce harmful or costly outcomes How traditional insurance models fail in the face of opacity, model drift and dynamic learning What makes AI risk so difficult to price and how parametric triggers can help bridge the gap Why better assurance leads to better insurance, and how incentives can drive safer AI deployment How continuous monitoring tools are being developed to audit AI models in real time What today’s early AI insurance offerings (from the likes of Munich Re and Relm) are actually covering The role of non-profit research in supporting commercial innovation without commercial bias What insurers can do now to prepare for an AI-driven future even without historical data If you like what you’re hearing, please leave us a review on whichever platform you use or contact Robin Merttens on LinkedIn. Sign up to the InsTech newsletter for a fresh view on the world every Wednesday morning.