A London software company that helps commercial insurers speed up how they assess and price risk.
Cytora offers an AI-powered platform for commercial insurance. Commercial insurance covers businesses (a factory, a fleet of lorries, a restaurant chain) rather than individuals. When a business wants cover, a huge amount of messy information such as emails, PDFs and spreadsheets has to be read, checked and priced. Cytora's software reads and organises that information automatically, so insurers, wholesale brokers and managing general agents (MGAs, firms that sell policies on an insurer's behalf) can assess risk and quote faster. (AI, artificial intelligence, means software that learns patterns from data.)
Cytora was founded in 2012 as a University of Cambridge start-up, according to Cambridge Enterprise, which first invested in 2014. It began as a company analysing geopolitical risk, and later moved into insurance. Richard Hartley is its chief executive and co-founder; the sources we read do not name other founders. In September 2025 Applied Systems, a large insurance software company, announced it was acquiring Cytora and making it a business unit. A data profile lists Cytora as London-based, but its own pages did not give office addresses, and its careers page lists Australia as a location option.
Cytora says it wants to "build the future of insurance" and help the risk industry absorb more of the world's risk, closing the protection gap (the gap between what is at risk and what is insured) so businesses can thrive. Mr Hartley described the aim as "enabling commercial insurers to accelerate the transition to digital risk flows". These are the company's own statements.
Its platform is called Making Risk Flow, and the features named in its announcement include Autopilot, Concierge, Digitization Center and Unified Risk Reasoning. It earlier described a "Risk Engine" that uses machine learning to analyse large amounts of data to help insurers choose and price risk. In May 2024 it launched Risk Flow Academy, a free online learning platform for insurance professionals at all career stages, covering digitising submissions, generative AI and connecting data sources, with an expanded paid version including in-person workshops for insurers.
Cytora lists four values: a bias to action, ownership and persistence, scalable impact, and customer focus. It says it prizes first-principles thinking (working out answers from the basics), curiosity and diversity of background. Teams include engineering, product, sales, marketing, customer success, operations and people. Hiring typically starts with a call with the talent team, followed by two or three video interviews with colleagues, whom it calls Cytorians. It recruits on a rolling basis and invites people to get in touch even without a matching opening. We did not find a graduate scheme, apprenticeship or internship.
Website: www.cytora.com
PURPOSE helps school and university students explore 62 sectors and over 1,000 entry-level careers in the UK, then connects them directly with employers.
Explore PURPOSE