Ignite reboots accelerator programme to find more female founders

Ignite Software Systems has given the campaign for its in-house accelerator a reboot to find more female entrepreneurs.

Ignition was launched earlier this year (10 January 2023) to bridge the gender gap in startup broking – given the lack of female founders in both broking firms and insurtechs.

However, in a post on LinkedIn earlier this week (5 June 2023), Ignite said that it had “lots of applications, mostly from male founders”.

“[This] is great but… we’re re-booting this campaign to try to find to more female future founders and entrepreneurs out there,” the insurtech policy admin system for brokers and managing general agents (MGAs) added.

Speaking to Insurance Times, managing director Toby MacLachlan said Ignition was “still targeting a 50/50 split of female to male founders”.

”Given this, we are relaunching our campaign to attract more female entrepreneurs to the programme, which offers support in all aspects of launching and growing a brokerage,” he added.

“[This] includes accessing capacity and distribution channels, regulation and compliance, marketing support and more.”

’Needs to change’

In March 2022, Aviva’s chief executive Amanda Blanc noted that it could take the insurance industry three decades to achieve gender parity in senior level roles.

And in 2020, Crunchbase reported that only 11 investments in female led insurtechs were made that year – and just 4.2% of the 262 insurtech investments were completed.

Speaking about Ignite’s aim with Ignition, MacLachlan continued: “Our goal through Ignition is to promote innovation and diversity across insurance broking, which hasn’t changed.

”The significant gender imbalance in our industry is no secret and is even worse when you look at those founding their own businesses. This needs to change.”