Company: Superscript
Founder: Cameron Shearer and Ben Rose
Website: https://gosuperscript.com/
Description: Customised business insurance, paid monthly
Superscript, which began life as Digital Risks in 2015, is transforming insurance for SMEs. The needs of today’s businesses are evolving rapidly, but business insurance is not. Since the pandemic in particular, small businesses have sprung up to address fast-changing customer needs driven by innovation, new technology and a new way of working. Business insurance coverage, however, is cumbersome and slow, being largely driven by underwriting appetites which have been developed and refined over a long period of time. This does not serve fast-moving small businesses well, and is a fundamental barrier to growth which Superscript is tackling head on.
Superscript provides personalised, flexible subscription-based insurance designed around the unique needs of each small business. It does this in two ways: firstly, through the development of proprietary end-to-end technology designed specifically to modernise the insurance process. Superscript has an intuitive online experience which insures small businesses in a simpler, quicker and fairer way. Secondly, as an MGA that is regulated by the FCA, Superscript has delegated authority arrangements in place with a wide range of carriers. This means that the breadth of Superscript’s underwriting and product offerings across different SME markets is huge, allowing it to offer greater personalisation by aligning customer needs with the cover that suits them best. This could mean leveraging multiple underwriters at once, while the customer only deals with one brand, one interface and one bill – the unified Superscript experience.
To our knowledge, Superscript is the only provider with this capability.
Superscript’s unique position in the market means it has been gaining some serious traction recently. In 2020 it secured £16.5m through Series A funding – bringing total capital raised to £19m. Investors include the likes of BHL Holdings (owner of Compare the Market) and Seedcamp (Early backers of huge tech names like Revolut and Hopin). The team has grown three times larger over lockdown, too. From 21 people pre-Series A, to now 67. Since Series A, Superscript has focused on diversifying its distribution strategy, with the partnerships and advisory teams developing into key pillars of the business that have contributed significantly to Superscript’s growth in the past year.
One such milestone for the business was becoming the first insurtech to register as a Lloyd’s broker. This strengthened Superscript’s ability to arrange cover for emerging risks that traditional provisions would not meet. As a result, Superscript’s digital asset and blockchain business has grown ten-fold in the last year, propelling Superscript into the top five global brokers for digital assets and emerging risks. Strategic partnerships with the likes of Starling Bank, Crowdcube, Urban and money.co.uk have also dramatically increased revenue.
In the near future, Superscript will be embarking on a Series B funding round, as well as looking towards further product and geographic expansion in its quest to become the global leader in small business insurance.
