Ep241 Ben Hubbard Parsyl: In the business of rewarding the best clients

I’d like you to cast your mind back to 2016 when the insurtech phenomenon really started to emerge.

It was a very exciting time as tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists had finally spotted the huge opportunities that would become available if they started to use their skill and financial wherewithal to help transform the way the global insurance industry goes about its business.

The task was daunting, but the possibilities seemed endless.

That year Ben Hubbard co-founded Parsyl, the business he still heads today.

The firm made it into the first cohort of the Lloyd’s Lab and hasn’t looked back.

Now in 2025 Parsyl has come through its adolescence and has a made an impact in a niche segment of the cargo market where it has first been able to use its tech savvy to give itself a sustainable competitive edge.

Now eight years into the project, I’d argue the excitement is now greater because Parsyl is only just getting going and is poised to move into new lines of business.

Parsyl’s insurtech peers that didn’t make it usually failed because they were tech companies that didn’t know if they wanted to completely disrupt or collaborate with the incumbent insurance market – and it also turned out that many of them fundamentally underestimated how hard insurance can be to execute well and at the right scale. 

Parsyl is still here and thriving because it embedded itself in an entrepreneurial corner of the Lloyd’s market and has taken the best it has to offer, while adding its own extraordinary, almost alien layer of technological understanding on top.

It’s a best of both worlds philosophy.

So often we hear or read about the future of underwriting, as if it is something that hasn’t quite arrived yet, but will come eventually, if only we can be a little more patient.

Well, the wait is over – what Parsyl has built has fulfilled the promise of 2016 and then some

Ben and I met face to face on a stormy London afternoon in winter and the conversation fairly crackled along.

I defy you not to be enthused by Ben’s affable and easy-to-digest philosophy on how to make insurance better, more relevant to clients and more profitable for its capital backers.

Just to give you a taste, this is a business that already runs 100% of its submissions through Ai, constantly revamps its products over rolling two-week cycles and updates its models from experience and new third-party data every four months.

For incumbents this is jaw-dropping stuff. Luckily for us Ben is a friendly face who can help make this revolution palatable and easy to understand.

The future’s already here, so listen on to get yourself up to date.

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