i23, an AI start-up for insurance brokers founded by former Treasury minister Bim Afolami and PrimaryBid co-founder Anand Sambasivan, has raised £4.9M ($5.5M) in an oversubscribed seed round co-led by Outward VC, Seedcamp, Insiders VC and Four Cities Capital.
Insurance broking is a vast but fragmented market, worth nearly $700bn globally according to market data cited by Sky News, which first reported the raise. It is also admin-heavy, and brokerages typically find that a bigger book of business means a bigger back office. Sambasivan, i23’s chief executive, argues that need not be the case. “A bigger commercial insurance business is not automatically a better one,” he said.
i23 is building what it calls an agentic operating model, designed to take routine administrative work off brokers while increasing the revenue they generate for clients. Afolami, who serves as president, describes the approach as backing the human broker rather than replacing them. The name nods to that thinking: the “I” stands for intelligence and 23 for the pairs of human chromosomes, according to people close to the company. i23 has not disclosed customers or revenue.
The team has a fintech pedigree. Sambasivan co-founded PrimaryBid, the platform that opens public company fundraisings to retail investors, while Afolami served as economic secretary to the Treasury under Rishi Sunak. i23 is expected to buy an existing insurance broker in the coming months, according to insiders, which would give it a base to deploy its technology.
Outward VC, Seedcamp and Insiders VC are all UK-based, and Four Cities Capital also co-led as an early-stage backer. Outward has history with Sambasivan, having co-led PrimaryBid’s Series A in 2019. Sky News’s report does not set out in detail how the new money will be spent.
Sources