Thank you to everyone who came along to Partnerships Day 2025 and helped make it another hugely successful event in the Insurtech UK calendar.
This annual gathering brings together leading insurers, innovative insurtechs and professional partners to explore and encourage productive partnerships, sharing real-world experiences, success stories, and lessons learned from working together in an evolving landscape.
Whether the aim was to showcase their offering, discover new solutions, or simply just be inspired by what’s possible through partnerships, it was a jam-packed day of insights and networking across our dynamic ecosystem for all who attended.
The event was opened by Insurtech UK CEO Melissa Collett and Martyn Denney, Head of Innovation and Investment at our hosts Aon, who highlighted the changing global risk landscape and the importance of innovation in insurance.
Bridging the gap between insurers and insurtechs
First up on the agenda, Melissa chaired a panel of advisors from Grant Thornton, KPMG and Clifford Chance, who shared their expert insights into the hurdles to overcome at each stage of a partnerships journey – from forming partnerships to formalising collaborations – and the realities of working together across themes of technology and regulation.
Clarity and communication were identified as the key ingredients to success.
Partnerships in action
Following on from this was the opportunity to learn from practical examples of successful partnerships: how they were formed, what went well and what the challenges were.
Trenton McNee from Willis Towers Watson held a fireside chat with Suzanne Lawson, Partnerships Manager at Aviva, and Simon Randall, CEO of Pimloc, to find out more about their journey to a successful collaboration.
From pilot to partnership
Next up for the audience, Aon and Artificial shared their story of progression from small pilot to full partnership.
How well do you know your insurtech/insurer partner?
Once the fireside chats were completed, it was time to have a bit of fun putting the respective partnerships to the test.
Aon and Artificial were pitted against Aviva and Pimloc in a "Mr & Mrs"-style quiz to answer, among other questions, who responds to emails the quickest and who is most likely to change the implementation plan at short notice!
Thank you to everyone involved for playing along and indulging our efforts to bring a light-hearted lens to the realities of partnership working in insurance innovation!
The winners? Aon and Artificial – well done to them!
Insurers in the hot seat
Next, we turned pitching on its head as Insurtech UK Co-Chair Louise Birritteri invited insurers to set out their strategic priorities, saying why insurtechs should look to them specifically as the right people to present their innovations to for partnership.
Ageas, Aviva and Chaucer took to the stage to showcase their appetite and ambitions for innovation and how they work productively in partnerships with the start-ups and scale-ups driving the future of insurance.
With thanks to our expert panel Mike Caidan, Senior Vice President (Commercial) at Collinson Insurance, and James Bashford, Head of Business Development at ThingCo, for probing further into these insurers' presentations with their challenging questions.
Productive partnerships: opportunities and challenges
Partnerships Day also provided the opportunity to ask our audience members what they saw as the biggest cultural and commercial barriers to collaborations, and the greatest implementation challenges they had faced.
Our survey found the biggest barriers were:
- insurtech speed vs insurer governance process and risk adverse cultures
- legacy technology constraints with limited IT resources in insurer to support integration
- unclear or misaligned cost-sharing or revenue models
Conversely, the chances of a partnership’s success could be improved by:
- faster decision-making, procurement and onboarding cycles
- stronger executive sponsorship and ongoing senior engagement
Pitching at Partnerships Day
Up next, four exciting insurtechs set out their stall in pitching sessions facilitated by Insurtech UK Co-Chair Ernesto Suarez. These were: ClearSpeed, OIP Insurtech, Synergy Cloud and OpenDialog.
The companies received expert feedback from panel members Charlotte Gregory, Partner at Capital Law, and Andre Santos, Affinity BD Lead Director at Willis Towers Watson.
Closing keynote
Finally, Ed Leon Klinger, CEO of Flock, gave a closing keynote speech on the subject of things he wishes he had known when starting his insurtech or - as he put it - "a list of cataclysmic idiotic blunders I’ve made over the last decade which I want to help you avoid".
His honesty, humility and humour was the perfect way to close a fantastic event, with top tips for the audience including to "create luck surface area" and to "act like it's always Day 1".
Then it was on to networking, giving our attending members the chance to seek out collaborations with insurers, brokers and each other at our drinks reception.
Thanks to everyone who attended this fantastic event. We're looking forward to doing it all again next year!