UK Startup Cytora Raises £25M to Speed Up Commercial Insurance
Cytora secures £25 million in Series B funding to expand its AI platform that reduces commercial insurance underwriting from seven days to just 30 seconds.
U.K. startup Cytora raises £25 million in a Series B funding round led by EQT Ventures to expand its AI-powered commercial insurance underwriting platform. The company, which spun out of the University of Cambridge in 2014, uses artificial intelligence to analyze public and proprietary data alongside an insurer's internal risk information to improve decision-making.
CEO Richard Hartley points out that traditional commercial insurance underwriting is highly inefficient and relies on sparse, outdated information. He notes that while personal policies take minutes to buy, commercial insurance often takes up to seven days, causing 40 percent of premium costs to evaporate as operational friction rather than paying actual claims.
Cytora solves this problem by condensing the week-long underwriting process down to just 30 seconds through its programmatic API. The underlying risk engine learns patterns of good and bad risks over time, enabling large commercial insurers to set more accurate prices, reduce operating costs, and significantly improve the customer experience.