Donald Trump has been in the UK this week.
Hanging out with the King of England.
Tim Cook, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman and Stephen Schwarzman all got an invite to the state banquet. Not me ?
The positive that did come from it was the securing of £150bn of US investment.
It feels like a pivotal injection at a critical time – shoring up the UK economy in the short term whilst laying much-needed groundwork for a more resilient tech future. Let’s hope at least.
Right, let’s get on to the good stuff.
Beyond Boundaries Launch
Big one for us next month.
And, yes, I will keep plugging this…all the way through to the event!
On Wednesday October 15, 12:30-2:00pm (PST) at ITC Vegas, we’ll be launching the Sønr Beyond Boundaries 2025 Report.
This is our deep dive into how innovation is evolving, how insurers are responding, and we’ll reveal the Signal50 – the top emerging startups and scaleups pushing boundaries – and the Scale50 – the most impactful established companies transforming insurance.
We’ve got CEOs from leading insurers joining us on stage, through to the founders of the most exciting tech companies hitting insurance.
Expect insights on:
There’s been a good amount of activity in the commercial space this week.
Coterie Insurance has secured a strategic equity investment from Allianz X as part of its Series C. It also expanded its reinsurance relationship with Allianz Re.
More than a funding round – this is a heavyweight partnership that should give Coterie the capacity and reach to accelerate SMB commercial at scale. Nice.
Broker/agency core tech now fused with Cytora’s AI-driven risk data enrichment. Seems like a smart move – further pushing risk selection and underwriting smarts.
Eight years of graft for these guys – from an ambitious startup to a platform used by thousands across the industry. Now with GBLI’s backing, the team gets the resources to expand products and impact even faster.
Faster. Smarter. Now.
Reserv has topped up its Series B with another $16m, bringing the round to $41m.
The round was led by QBE Ventures, joined by new strategic partners and existing backers like Bain Capital Ventures and Flourish Ventures. With ARR already north of $75m, a team of 500+, and more than 100 clients on the books, Reserv is building serious momentum.
They’re also partnering closely with QBE Insurance, pushing the boundaries of AI-driven claims orchestration in the US market. Nice.
On that note, if you didn’t catch the interview I shared on LinkedIn this week, it’s a brilliant insight to QBEV – how they work, what they’re looking for, and how they connect innovation into the core insurance business.
On the partnership front, EXL and InsureMO have teamed up to help insurers modernise core systems and speed up digital distribution.
Think EXL’s AI and ops smarts + InsureMO’s cloud-native middleware.
Finally, John Hancock has partnered with Munich Re Life US to supercharge automated underwriting. Faster straight-through rates, tighter risk controls.
Around the Edges
LightSpun (ex-32Health) has raised a $13m Series A to scale its AI platform for dental insurance admin.
Dental is usually a little behind in health, but this feels like the first proper play to automate away the messy admin and give players real infrastructure to build on.
And in specialty, Radian Group is buying Inigo in a whopping $1.7bn, primarily all-cash deal funded from Radian’s available liquidity and subsidiary capital.
For a business best known for mortgage insurance, this is a decisive step into global, multi-line specialty via the Lloyd’s platform. Love it. Super bold.
I couldn’t be there in person as I had to head to Monaco last minute, but from all accounts it was another epic Pitch Day.
For those who don’t know the connection, Sønr has built the tech that underpins a good chunk of Lloyd’s Lab process – from the applications flowing through our platform, to the scoring engine used on Pitch Day. It’s all Sønr.
That not only means we get to play a key role in supporting the Lloyd’s Lab – one of the best accelerators in the industry – but it also gives us a lens into the market that nobody else has.
Every six months, hundreds of startups apply, ~20 shortlisted, ~10 selected.
We see the data behind the businesses, the shifts across the industry, and where opportunities and white space exists. And we use that intelligence to help clients spot opportunities long before they hit the mainstream. It’s a beautiful thing.
So, congrats to the new Cohort 15:
Adapting to a Changing World
ATG Services – environmental services tackling land restoration and PFAS “forever chemical” remediation with the UK’s most comprehensive database.
ISARR – AI-powered risk platforms analysing millions of global security events to help organisations anticipate disruption.
Sunereum Labs – AI-powered platform for energy infrastructure insurance, blending digital underwriting, smart contracts and parametric pricing.
Traditional Lines for Today
Pinepeak – a provider of hyper-local forecasts and real-time intelligence on wildfire risk and behaviour using physics-based algorithms and geospatial AI.
Data Intelligence and Process Transformation
Catbird – an AI-driven platform for specialty insurance claims.
Creation Rights – enabling creators to track, control, and monetise content across platforms using patented metadata technology.
Ecliptic Technology – a provider of collaborative platforms for the insurance market, streamlining delegated authority and claims.
Fluence World – a decision support tool for specialty insurers, using forensic linguistics and machine learning to uncover loss indicators in submission narratives.
Hexa – an AI‑native platform uniting processes, risks and data across functions, so operational changes flow seamlessly through claims, finance and reporting.
Pemberton – an environmental tech company delivering scalable biodiversity monitoring and verification.
RecordLinker – a Machine Learning-powered platform for data conversion and cross-system entity resolution.
Sustema – a behavioural analytics company helping commercial insurers improve underwriting by assessing client management behaviour.
An epic group.
Looking forward to seeing what they build with the market over the next 10 weeks.
Killing Innovation Zombies ?♂️
One worth tuning into next week… the next Camelot Innovation Hour is on with Elvin Turner, author of Be Less Zombie, sharing lessons on how to spot and kill “innovation zombies” – the projects that shuffle on without ever delivering real value.
?Thursday 26 Sept, 09:00–10:00 (UK time), Online
As always, Sønr is sponsoring the session and we’re looking forward to it.
If innovation delivery is on your radar, this should be an hour well spent.
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Right, that is me. Done.
It’s the Women’s Rugby World Cup semi-finals in Bristol tonight. NZ vs Canada. Should be a good ‘un.
