Charlotte Koep, Root chief operations officer.

South African born insurtech Root has expanded into the UK as the company seeks to broaden its reach.

The expansion into the UK was a ‘logical next move’ says the insurtech, which has over one million active policies on its platform, with 55 products live and a team of almost 50.

Root is an end-to-end insurance platform that helps companies build, sell and manage digital insurance products in Africa, the UK and Europe.

“There is a real appetite across the UK insurance market for a platform like ours, which offers both the technical flexibility to support a myriad product edge-cases and access to modern, accessible and embedded distribution possibilities – and at pace,” says

Charlotte Koep, Root chief operations officer.

She adds: “We’re establishing the business in the UK and building strong distribution partnerships. We find big organisations and we help them add value and create value – and use that to push ourselves into the market. We want to build long-term partnerships with the big players.”

According to Koep, with the move, Root has been ‘lucky’ in terms of timing as there’s been an ‘insurtech wave’ in the UK for the past six years, which bolstered the company’s position.

“We’ve been experiencing a strong pull from the market because this is something they’re trying to achieve and we can help them achieve it,” she says.

Koep adds: “Market players know what they want even if they need support to achieve it. Insurance companies there have invested a lot in their technology, burnt their fingers experimenting, and they know where the gaps are, what they want and what they don’t want.

“They’re ready for a mature, established solution like ours, with the flexibility to build products exactly for their customers. In many emerging markets, it’s all so new that people don’t yet know what they want. They’re still focused on solving the first step of going digital.”

Koep says Root’s top focus for 2023 is on doubling down across the UK market and growing the team to support expansion.