Damian Arnold, CEO of Artificial, looks back at the first six months of a great year for the company.

2019 has so far been one of Artificial’s most exciting periods since the company’s creation back in 2013. With a plethora of new additions, exciting ongoing projects and more yet to come, the team have been busier than ever.

All startups need to move quickly, but I feel our amazing team has achieved an incredible amount in the first six months of the year.

We’re proud of the team and what they’re building. This provides us with a great platform to deliver in the second half of the year and we can really continue to impact the insurance industry.

David King, our CCO and co-founder, identifies some of the highlights of 2019 so far.

1. Our team continued to expand

To start off the year, four newcomers joined our London cohort; Ollie Fox in the Business Development team, Alexis Renaudin as Head of Data Science, Katalin Konczol as Technical Support Analyst in London and Anna Burge as Head of Content and Marketing.

We also welcomed Engineering Intern Emma Tye and Machine Learning intern Andy Li for the summer.

In our Warsaw office, Dominik Ajlert joined the team as a Front-end Engineer.

2. Our business grew

We’re significantly increasing our year on year revenue and growing our client base, as well as the number of policies that have been processed through our platform.

We’ve built a great pipeline of new clients and we’re excited to help more firms transform their business working with us.

3. We raised £4.2million in seed funding

In April we closed a round of seed funding for £4.2 million. The funding is a co-investment between Alma Mundi InsurTech Fund, Force Over Mass and other investors.

The funding was closed with a view to scale and grow in key areas, including expansion of the engineering and sales teams, targeting new geographical areas and scaling our current platform.

4. We partnered with Capita

In April we announced our partnership with Capita Scaling Partner (CSP), a start-up development unit committed to securing growth and expansion for early stage disruptive companies.

Out of hundreds of potential companies Capita chose us as their Insurtech partner, with the belief that our technology can be leveraged to add value to clients across the insurance sector.

Our relationship with CSP has given us the opportunity to grow rapidly with access to valuable business tools such as scalable services, new consumer channels and a global network of retailers and insurers. It also gives us the credibility we need to stand out and become a market leader. In turn we strengthened their position in the insurance industry and enhanced their Insurtech offering.

5. We were featured in the Oxbow Impact 25

In February we were included in the prestigious Oxbow Impact 25, an annual report by the London insurance consultancy firm Oxbow Partners that highlights 25 InsurTech companies they believe are ‘well-positioned’ to have a major impact in the insurance industry.

Recognition in the report was a significant step forward for the company as we began to expand and become more well-known in the InsurTech sector.

6. We became part of three exciting new InsurTech communities

Later on in the year we joined forces with other growing InsurTech companies and became part of three exciting industry groups: MarketMinds, Instech London and Insurtech UK.

MarketMinds

MarketMinds’ vision is to ‘accelerate the insurance ecosystem of the future’, and Artificial’s anchor sponsorship provides the global community with invaluable expertise in the fields of artificial intelligence and digital insurance solutions.

InsTech London

We also became a founding member of InsTech London, a group for innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and professionals from across the market which enables them to ‘meet like-minded folk and provide them with a hub to explore together ways to maximise the opportunities offered by technology.’

Insurtech UK

Insurtech UK aim to ‘speak with one voice about specific insurtech-related issues and needs arising out of the technological revolution in the sector.’ Our corporate membership allows us to be part of a growing group whose mission is to ‘use technology to improve insurance and risk management for customers, and make the UK the best place for innovating insurance in the world.'

7. We worked with PwC on their Scale Insurtech scheme

This year we were also chosen to be part of the PwC Scale Insurtech Scheme, a programme that supports eight of the brightest international InsurTech businesses with their ambitious growth plans.

The programme focused on the UK insurance market, and through our involvement we were able to make a number of connections with industry leaders and other scale-up firms with the aim to build mutually beneficial commercial opportunities and relationships.

8. We continued to improve

Most importantly, we have continued to strengthen as a company. We have a close-knit culture and a group of creative and innovative thinkers who have enabled the successes of the past six months - and with several exciting new projects in view, the team shows no sign of stopping.

We believe in hiring the best people to create the best products, so if you want to join us, check out our Careers page here.