Martin Schultheiss: Uinsure accelerates AI investment in support of vision ‘to change the way insurance is bought in the UK’

Martin Schultheiss, group managing director at embedded insurance insurtech Uinsure, has fully bought in to the advantages artificial intelligence (AI) can provide in business use cases – so much so that his firm has pivoted its private equity (PE) investment spend to launch a new AI lab, introduced an additional company value centred on technology learning and Schultheiss himself has sought to better understand AI powered productivity by getting an AI coach.

In January 2024, Uinsure secured a minority investment from Lloyds Development Capital (LDC), the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group. This signalled the start of a new four-year growth strategy for the home insurance insurtech, which provides policies embedded within mortgage application journeys to support independent financial and mortgage advisors.

The financial firepower provided by LDC enabled Uinsure to spread PE spend further afield than its previous technology focus – which the firm now considers to be an ongoing “hygiene factor”.

In 2024 and 2025, therefore, investment spend switched to centre on “data engineering, data structure, cleaning the data [and creating a] single source of data” – building blocks that Schultheiss describes as being “absolutely fundamental in order to deliver embedded insurance and deliver all the capabilities you need”.

Other areas Uinsure invested in last year included AI-based product development and ramping up pricing sophistication models in collaboration with partners such as Willis Towers Watson, Open GI and Polaris.

However, in February 2026, Schultheiss once again pivoted Uinsure’s investment focus, securing board approval to launch a new AI lab that is now in the “startup phase” of its evolution.

Schultheiss admits that he even used AI to pitch the idea of the lab to Uinsure’s board in the first place, physically demonstrating a possible use case and “let the AI lab raise its own funding” in just 10 minutes.

Uinsure’s AI lab has numerous prongs. Firstly, it works as “a side by side”, Schultheiss explains, sharing the company’s “technology road map” with other firms that have “not come from our technology world” to encourage speed to market competition and efficiency.

The lab will also operate as an innovation hub, where Uinsure can build on its existing “plug and play” infrastructure to see how else AI can be incorporated – for example, looking at conversational AI made popular by OpenAI’s ChatGPT model.

The insurtech will lastly use its AI lab as a sandbox for further “technology and data engineering”, as well as to dig into how AI can improve “operational processes” – such as tapping into voice enabled technology.

Schultheiss explains: “I personally don’t operate without artificial intelligence anymore. I’m seeing it widespread in our business. It’ll be a very high investment pillar of our business – AI, from sale to renewal to claims.”

To further support Uinsure’s investigations into AI, Schultheiss added a fourth company value onto its existing list in March 2026.

He says: “We had three values, which is above and beyond in everything we do, one team, one mission and do the right thing. We’ve introduced a fourth value, which is always learning.

“The reason we’ve introduced that is because [of] this whole investment and innovation. If you continue to execute what you’re executing today and you continue to execute the way you are, you will execute for a period of time, but you will not build [a] long-term strategic horizon business that will keep you at the forefront.”

Schultheiss has stepped up personally as well, appointing his own AI coach at the beginning of 2025 to teach him “how to increase productivity with AI”.

He continues: “So many companies are playing with AI, but culture trumps strategy every time. So, unless [AI is] driven from the top, it never really gets used and embedded. Last year, I set a goal with this coach, which was [that I] wasn’t able to do anything without using artificial intelligence tools.

“That’s [now] permeated into our executive committee and now we’re using multiple [AI] tools. We use Copilot, ChatGPT, Gamma.

“The way I see it, it used to be Microsoft 365 [and you needed] to be able to do Excel and PowerPoint. Now you need to be able to use [AI] tools, which is quite exciting for us as an organisation because the tools are accelerating our ability to move quicker, make decisions quicker and actually present our business far better.”

Going for growth

Uinsure’s attention on AI has, in part, been designed to support the firm’s ‘three T’ strategy, which launched in 2024 in line with the LDC investment. This approach is centred on tripling Uinsure’s performance metrics over a three to four-year time frame.

Figures in the crosshairs here include top and bottom line, customer satisfaction and digital engagement, to name a few.

Giving Insurance Times a temperature check on the strategy’s status, Schultheiss says Uinsure is “well on track” to hit its goals because “all our metrics are a year ahead of where we should be”.

For example, its gross written premium (GWP) is currently sitting just above £100m, with the insurtech striving to reach £150m by 2028. This is an improvement on the £70m GWP the firm handled in 2024.

Equally, staff numbers have grown from 156 to 240 since 2024 – primarily across engineering, technology, data and AI roles – whereas Uinsure’s customer count will exceed 350,000 this year. This is up from 270,000 two years ago, in part thanks to 10 new partnerships agreed with banks and building societies over the last 18 months.

Uinsure now works with Virgin Money, Yorkshire Building Society, Saga and the Bank of Ireland, for example.

For Schultheiss, an important element underpinning Uinsure’s growth so far has been acknowledging “a much wider total addressable market” that has seen the insurtech take its embedded insurance proposition beyond its heartland of mortgage intermediaries and independent financial advisors to also liaise closely with banks and building societies.

Furthermore, Uinsure has upcoming partnerships with two retail brands that it plans to announce this year, signposting an additional segment that Uinsure can laterally move into.

However, Schultheiss is keeping Uinsure’s long-term options open – he certainly does not discount product or geographical expansion as possible plays in the next five to 10 years. But for him, 2026 will centre on a “big data agenda” and getting the AI lab “up and running”.

He says: “We want to change the way insurance is bought in the UK. So, until such time as all the home insurance buying behaviour has changed, how customers buy through embedded insurance, [being] 100% digital, conversational. That’s everything we obsess about.

“Our vision really hasn’t changed. We [are] essentially just accelerating our platform to be preemptive. All the digital tools we are building, we preempt customer need. We will know when they need home insurance, when they’re renewing, when they’re doing refinance.

“We’re embedding it into our partners’ brand names, so you’ve got the power of the brand, and then we reach those customers before they consider alternatives, which is largely aggregation, and we engage those customers digitally. We engage them through various different tools and mechanisms.

“We’re underpinning that with our strong insurer [panel], lots of data and that exchange to deliver [competitive] pricing.”

Positioned at the forefront

Although internal metrics are certainly indicating a positive direction of travel for Uinsure against its strategic ambitions, Schultheiss confesses to feeling “a little bit emotional” about additional external recognition the brand received last year – for him, a confirmation of the unique selling points he believes Uinsure is bringing to UK general insurance market.

For example, in September 2025 at Insurance Times’ Tech and Innovation Awards, Uinsure was highly commended in the Innovation of the Year – Service Provider category. This was followed by winning gold in the Business Partner of the Year category at the Insurance Times Awards in December 2025.

“What it means for me is we’re at the forefront of innovation. It means we’re at the forefront of relationships. It means we’re doing the right thing,” Schultheiss enthuses.

“It has significant meaning for the business and it also gives the business significant credibility, because people choose to partner with Uinsure over a large insurer partner. [This continues] to motivate us to deliver.

“We’re still very young at heart. We‘re still very entrepreneurial. [These award wins are a] testament to the strategy, execution and, most importantly, the people [at Uinsure].

“At the end of the day, whether you’re a tech business or not, it all comes back down to the core set of people that go above and beyond, continue to do the right thing, continue to work together as teams. It was amazing recognition for the business.”