Insurtech Gateway launches as world's first FCA-accredited accelerator

Insurtech Gateway has opened the world’s first insurtech accelerator authorised as an insurance broker by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Removing hurdles that supposedly harm entrepreneurs in this sector - insurance and funding barriers - InsurTech Gateway is said to streamline the process of building insurtech startups.

InsurTech Gateway is a co-investment from Hambro Perks and Robert Lumley from the Lumley insurance family, and is supported by a panel of reinsurers and angel investors from the insurance sector.

Lumley, co-founder of InsurTech Gateway, said: “The three main hurdles insurtech startups face are regulatory and capacity barriers, the funding gap and big insurers’ slow behaviour.

“That means there is little innovation happening in the sector because it is too difficult to get past the roadblocks. The InsurTech Gateway will change all of that.”

The resource behind the InsurTech Gateway team should reduce the time and cost it takes to prove an insurtech concept enabling entrepreneurs to have a good chance of creating and launching a viable business.

For companies and entrepreneurs, InsurTech Gateway will reduce the time needed to get to proof of concept from two years to three to six months, and costs by 75 per cent.

In the next five years, InsurTech Gateway envisages launching up to 25 new startups. In addition to securing the Financial Conduct Authority to create its own innovative regulatory model, InsurTech Gateway has also arranged underwriting capability from Aspen.

Stephen Brittain, co-founder and director of InsurTech Gateway, added: “For the last year and a half we have met insurance startups who by the time they got to shaping their idea, were exhausted.

“The InsurTech Gateway will get them through those roadblocks which killed their entrepreneurial spirit quickly, by accelerating them to proof of business so that they know whether they are sitting on a great big opportunity or wasting their time.”

Rupert Hambro, chairman of Hambro Perks, concluded: “InsurTech Gateway will disrupt those who believe their traditional businesses are impervious to change.

“One of the many ways we will do that is by supporting new ideas and innovative ways to improve the insurance products currently available to consumers.”

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