Company: Meshed
Co-Founders: Jake Wells, Mark Costello, Vincent Liu
Website: https://www.meshedcover.com
About Meshed
Meshed is the first AI-native commercial insurance broker in the UK, built for the small businesses that are the backbone of Britain. The company was founded in 2024 by Jake Wells, Mark Costello, and Vince Liu, and received FCA authorisation in November 2025.
The thesis is simple. There are 5.5 million small businesses in the UK, and most of them are underinsured, overcharged, or both. Traditional brokers cannot serve the small business end of the market profitably, because their cost to serve is too high. So they charge 20 to 40 percent commission or do not turn up at all. Most small firms end up on price comparison sites buying off-the-shelf cover that rarely fits the business underneath.
Meshed fixes that with two structural advantages. First, the broking process runs on AI built from the ground up, which means the cost to serve is a fraction of the industry standard. That is why Meshed can charge a flat 10 percent commission and still serve firms the rest of the market has written off. Second, the company distributes through accountants, who are the most trusted advisors small businesses have. 64 accountant partnerships have been signed to date, representing approximately £200 million in underlying insurance spend, giving Meshed a route to market that traditional brokers spend years trying to manufacture. The business is currently growing 40 percent month on month.
The journey has not been straightforward. The biggest early challenge was investor conviction. Meshed was raising right as AI-native services was a thesis most VCs had not yet developed a view on. Every pitch started with a 20 minute detour explaining how an AI-led services business is different from pure software, and how the unit economics actually work. The way through was evidence rather than argument. The team showed concrete numbers on cost to serve, submission speed, and broker productivity. The pre-seed round was set at £500k. It closed at £950k, oversubscribed, with backing from Haatch, Exponential Science Foundation, Aviva via Founders Factory, and a strong group of insurance angels. Aviva, the biggest insurer in the UK, is one of the early investors.
The second major challenge was regulatory. FCA authorisation is the gatekeeper to everything in insurance. Companies like Revolut have spent close to a decade chasing equivalent regulatory sign-off in banking. Meshed treated authorisation as a first-class product workstream from day one and was authorised inside a year of forming the company.
The impact on the fintech and insurance industry is starting to show. Meshed is proving that AI-native service businesses can be built, funded, and regulated in the UK. For customers, it means properly advised cover at a price that finally makes sense. For accountants, it means a trusted referral partner that pays back into their clients. And for the market, it is a working answer to a problem traditional brokers gave up on decades ago.
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