Article

The biggest year yet: Artificial's 2022 in review

Anna Burge
Anna Burge19-Dec-2022

From Series A to appointing our new Chairman, 2022 was a huge year for the team at Artificial.

The biggest year yet: Artificial's 2022 in review

In 2022 we welcomed a record number of new team members, made some exciting developments to our platform and embraced in-person events once again. Here’s a quick look at what the Artificial team got up to.

Series A 💰

One of the biggest highlights for the company in 2022 was our Series A funding in June.

We raised a £9.5m led by Force Over Mass Capital with participation from existing and new investors, including Mundi Ventures, No.9 and MS&AD Ventures.

The funding round marked a major milestone as it showed confidence in our team and our technology, having proven the success of algorithmic underwriting with partners across the London Market.

New hires 🚀

It was the fastest-growing year ever for the Artificial team. Throughout the year the company grew by 11 employees and several advisors across all areas of the business:

Chris Done - Senior Product Engineer

Tom Smalley - Product Engineer

Daniel Diaz - Product Engineer

María Solá - Product Designer

Franciska Kiraly - Executive Assistant

Pawel Chajewski - Front End Engineer

Ville Sokk - Product Engineer

George Roberts - Business Development Lead

Deana Murfitt - Chief Operating Officer

MJ Alfardan - DevOps Engineer

Jessica Da Cunha - Finance Manager

We also welcomed several new advisors throughout the year: Jonathan Prinn, Lisa Wardlaw and Sabine VanderLinden. Each brings a wealth of valuable wisdom to the Artificial team.

In October we announced that Ascot Underwriting founder Martin Reith had become our new Non Executive Chairman, bringing unmatched expertise and experience to the team and helping us to shape and execute the strategic direction of the company.

Product development 💻

Throughout the year, the ever-expanding Haskell engineering team continued to develop Artificial’s own domain-specific language and expanded its applications across our algorithmic underwriting platform.

The data team also improved data extraction features to easily feed data to our algorithms from widely used insurance documents, such as PDFs, Excels, SOVs and MRCs.

We are also continuing to work with our broking partners to create structured digital contracts, using integrations to wording libraries, enabling the seamless flow of data to underwriters and other target systems.

Company updates

Making the list 🏆

This year Artificial was included in Sønr’s Insurtech 100 in October, as well as FinTech Global’s Insurtech 100 & Business Cloud’s Insurtech 50 lists.

We believe this shows beyond doubt that algorithmic underwriting is here to stay for the commercial insurance industry - not just in the UK, but across the world.

The future of insurance is a place where Artificial technology will fit right in as the ‘glue’ holding carriers, brokers, data providers and customers together.

Inaugural Partyficial 🎈

This year we held the first ever ‘Partyficial’, a celebration of employee contributions to the success of Artificial over the past nine years. Team members from all over the UK and Europe - many of whom had never met each other in person before - met up in London to handcraft fettuccine, stir cocktails and catch up.

Partyficial was a fantastic way of bringing the team closer and showing appreciation for their hard work, and plans are already underway for 2023’s 10 year anniversary edition…

Office revamp 🖌️

The Artificial office was revitalised this year with a lick of paint, some new furniture and a very important addition: the coffee station.

An integral member of the team, the new coffee machine has significantly increased productivity and has its own dedicated Slack channel and swathe of devoted fans.

If you’re in the area, pop by Bow Lane and one of the team will pour you a carefully crafted flat white.

Podcast interviews 🎙️

Scouting For Growth Podcast

In March, the Queen of Insurtech Sabine VanderLinden interviewed Artificial co-founder David King for her Scouting For Growth podcast. King extolled the virtues of algorithmic underwriting and explored what this really means for the market in the coming years.

Listen now:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

The Leadership In Insurance Podcast

Later in the year, Alex Bond of the Leadership In Insurance Podcast met with David to, in his words, ‘go full tech geek’ on algorithmic underwriting and discuss why insurers shouldn’t try to build the tech themselves.

Listen here:

Spotify

Events 🥂

TINtech London Market

Artificial were Innovation sponsors of TINtech London Market in February, giving David King the chance to test his hosting skills as he introduced speakers throughout the day.

ITC Vegas

Artificial COO Deana Murfitt made her first appearance representing Artificial on a commercial sustainability and responsible underwriting panel at ITC Vegas in September.

London Market Conference

David King joined an esteemed panel to discuss all things algorithmic underwriting at November’s LMC.

In-office events

We welcomed the cream of the insurtech crop to our offices twice this year, most recently for a Christmas get-together where David King hosted a lively discussion around the Christmas tree and new connections were made.

Partnerships 🤝

This year we continued to grow our relationships with existing and new partners. We also became sponsors of Link - the LGBTQ+ Insurance Network and joined the ACORD Solutions Group to harness core market data standards.

What lies ahead

While a well-deserved rest for the team is approaching, thoughts have already turned to next year and the exciting plans that await.

We’re continuing to grow the team (you can find all of our job openings here) and build on our algorithmic underwriting platform to include some exciting new features.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the whole team at Artificial!

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