i23, the London insurance start-up co-founded by former economic secretary to the Treasury Bim Afolami, has raised £4.9m in seed funding. Four Cities Capital co-led the round, with Outward VC, Seedcamp and Insiders Ventures also investing.
Afolami was economic secretary to the Treasury from 2023 to 2024 under Rishi Sunak's government. He co-founded i23 with Anand Sambasivan, a co-founder of PrimaryBid, the platform that gives retail investors access to public company fundraisings.
The founding team also includes Mike Coombes, PrimaryBid's former chief operating officer, and Salman Valibeik, co-founder of the marketing start-up Opriva.
The deal
Sky News first reported the £4.9m seed round, and Sambasivan has since confirmed that the company has launched. Four Cities Capital co-led the round. Outward VC, Seedcamp and Insiders Ventures also took part.
The company did not disclose a valuation or the founders' combined stake. Seedcamp and Outward VC are on the cap table, two London investors that usually write early cheques and keep investing in later rounds. The founders' track record is a large part of what investors are backing: PrimaryBid was bought by US fintech SoFi last year.
The product
i23 says it is building an "AI-native" insurance broker. Its software is designed to take over the routine administrative work that brokers currently do by hand. That includes collecting client information, preparing submissions and handling the paperwork for renewals and policy changes.
The company is going after a large and fragmented market. Market data puts the UK insurance broking market at up to £22bn a year, split across thousands of small and mid-sized intermediaries. Many of them still rely on manual processes and older software.
Why it matters
i23 joins a growing number of UK start-ups applying AI agents to regulated financial services, where administrative costs take up a large share of revenue. If a broker can be run largely by software, it can either charge lower fees or keep much more of each commission.
Sambasivan has said London's early-stage market is far healthier than it was a decade ago, when he co-founded PrimaryBid.
What's next
i23 has not said when its first products will go live or whether it will apply for its own Financial Conduct Authority permissions or work through partners at first. Either route will shape how quickly it can start earning commission, and with it the terms of a Series A.
For Afolami, the company is one of the more prominent moves by a former minister from Westminster into venture-backed tech. It comes as the government is reworking founder incentives in the Budget.
Original source: Tech.eu (citing Sky News) — https://tech.eu/2026/10/29/former-uk-government-minister-afolami-raises-ps5m-for-ai-insurance-broker-startup/
