Ancep, a London company that builds AI agents for commercial insurance brokers, has raised $8.5m in a funding round led by Creandum, the company announced today.
Kleiner Perkins and Vicus Ventures also took part, alongside angel investors including Christa Davies, former chief financial officer of Aon, and operators from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind, according to the company.
Ancep said it will use the money to support growth and hiring. Business Matters has previously reported on funding for AI agent platforms aimed at smaller businesses in other sectors.
Ancep says placing a risk takes roughly the same effort whether the commission is a few hundred pounds or tens of thousands, so below a certain size brokers turn the work down or leave it at the bottom of the queue.
Ancep estimates that up to 30 per cent of the risks a broker sees fall below that line and that about half could be placed profitably. It puts the revenue a large brokerage never books as a result at 5 to 10 per cent, which it says its agents help recover within a few weeks and without adding headcount.
The raise comes as commercial insurance prices continue to fall. Global commercial insurance rates fell 6 per cent in the second quarter of 2026, the eighth consecutive quarterly decline, according to Marsh’s Global Insurance Market Index. Marsh attributed the fall to abundant capacity and strong competition between insurers, and recorded an 8 per cent decline in UK composite rates over the same period.
Ancep’s agents carry out the routine stages of a placement: reading the client’s submission, building the broker’s standard documents from it and approaching insurers for terms by email, portal or API. The company says they work inside platforms brokers already run, including policy admin systems, e-trade portals and CRMs, rather than through individual integrations.
For the largest brokers, which often run dozens of policy systems side by side, Ancep says that is the difference between a rollout measured in days and one measured in years.
According to the company, only an authorised broker can bind cover, and every agent output is reviewed by the broking team before it takes effect. Each client runs in its own isolated environment, and nothing is pooled or trained on across brokerages without explicit consent.
The company deploys one workflow at a time and says it shows a working prototype within two days of signing a non-disclosure agreement. It charges a portion of the value its agents create.
Ancep says its agents are live at ACIC Financial Advisory, which it describes as one of the largest credit insurance brokers in Austria, at a top 10 UK broker and in the specialty lines of one of the top US brokers. The company said the chief operating officer of one customer division reported a 10 per cent revenue increase within six weeks of going live.
At ACIC, which specialises in credit insurance and surety, Ancep said its agents support work such as reviewing policy wordings, comparing insurer terms and preparing market submissions. The firm has taken on more clients without adding administrative headcount, according to Ancep.
Christoph Zawadil, managing director at A.C.I.C. Financial Advisory, said: “Ancep understood that workflow deeply, rather than trying to sell us generic AI, which is why adoption across the business has been exceptionally high. We did not do this to cut costs but to get our specialists’ time back, and they are now using it to advise clients, expand into new markets and build insurance products we didn’t have the capacity to design previously.”
Gagan Khurana, co-founder and chief executive of Ancep, said: “There have been enough vendors selling brokers time saved and cost reduced which just don’t resonate and get stuck in two year procurement cycles. What we sell is net new revenue.”
He added: “Plenty of people are betting brokers get disintermediated. We think the opposite: brokers have huge leverage, and no chatbot is going to replace it.”
Simon Schmincke, partner at Creandum, said: “Commercial insurance is a $3 trillion market that has absorbed ten years of software promises without much changing inside the largest brokers.”
Amy Ingham
Amy Ingham is a reporter at Business Matters, covering UK business news with a focus on breaking news, business policy, late payments and insolvency. She joined the magazine in 2026 after completing the NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at Harlow College's journalism school. Her recent reporting includes British Steel's nationalisation and its impact on SME suppliers, the decline in late payments by large firms, and Insolvency Service director disqualifications. Reach her at aingham@cbmeg.co.uk.
