TL;DR
Bim Afolami, economic secretary to the Treasury under Rishi Sunak, has co-founded an AI start-up aimed at insurance broking, Sky News reported on 28 October. The company, i23, raised £4.9m ($5.5m) in an oversubscribed seed round led by UK venture firms. It is building AI agents to handle brokers’ routine administration and expects to buy an existing broker in the coming months.
The deal
Afolami’s co-founder is Anand Sambasivan, who helped start the retail investment platform PrimaryBid. Sambasivan is chief executive and Afolami will be president. Seedcamp, Outward VC and Insiders VC were among the leads on the round, with Four Cities Capital also co-leading.
i23 describes its product as an agentic operating model: software agents that take over repetitive broking administration, which the company says will also lift revenue generation for clients. The name joins “i”, for intelligence, with 23, for the 23 pairs of human chromosomes, a nod, insiders told Sky, to the founders’ view that technology should amplify human skill.
“A bigger commercial insurance business is not automatically a better one,” Sambasivan said. “We believe AI can change that: brokers serve clients better, and revenue can grow without admin work growing with it.”
Buy, then automate
Sky cites market data putting global insurance broking at almost $700bn, and describes it as highly fragmented. In our view, the plan to acquire a broker matters more than the funding: owning a firm would give i23 real clients, real policies and real paperwork to automate from the outset, rather than selling software to brokers one at a time.
The deal adds to recent activity in UK insurance AI, including Guidewire’s agreement to buy London-based hyperexponential.
Looking Forward
In our view, the acquisition will be the real test. Admin-heavy, fragmented sectors such as broking make a strong case for AI agents, but bolting agents onto an existing business means changing how its staff work, not just its software. If i23 can show margins improving at a broker it owns, the model could be copied across other fragmented professional services. Until then, £4.9m is a modest seed round with an ambitious plan attached.