Revolutionary tech not required: Lloyd’s innovation guru Gaze on insurtech success

Ed Gaze (pictured left), chief executive of Innovative Risk Labs (IRL) and one of the brains behind the Lloyd’s Lab, and James York (pictured right), IRL’s founder and executive chairman, sat down for an exclusive interview with Intelligent Insurer, fresh after IRL made a groundbreaking entry into the Lloyd’s market.

UK-based IRL has become the first insurtech broker to be granted a licence to trade within the Lloyd’s market. Serving as an insurtech incubator, IRL provides various means of support to emerging companies, guiding them from pre-launch stages to navigating the London Market. For startups seeking regulatory compliance from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), IRL acts as their appointed representative, expediting their path to market entry. Originally established by York in 2013, the company onboarded Gaze, who established and ran the Lloyd’s Lab startup accelerator programme, as chief executive officer in August 2022, aiming to address a distinct need in the market.

Gaze has identified a gap in the market where he says existing Lloyd’s brokers have failed to meet the needs of start-ups. “Early commitment from clients to a broker that at the time had yet to secure its Lloyd’s broker licence validated our belief that a big gap in the market existed,” he states.

Highlighting some of the challenges faced when building a business from the ground up, and having experienced it first-hand, York acknowledges that “the compliance regime in the industry is robust for a reason, and can be quite tough to navigate. But the primary issue I always faced was building supply chains in a timely fashion”.