JustParent wins Insurathon competition for most innovative InsurTech start-up

Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has announced JustParent as the winner of its seventh annual Insurathon, a competition to identify and support the most innovative tech start-ups and scale-ups within the insurance sector.

JustParent is the first UK provider of parental leave insurance for businesses. The start-up company’s new product enables UK businesses to offer enhanced – above statutory - parental leave pay for their staff without risking prohibitive financial costs. It does this by offering insurance which will pay 100 percent of the basic salary of staff on parental leave, above an agreed excess, allowing businesses to budget for it and plan ahead.

The insurance broker’s innovative platform enables intermediaries and distributors to transfer data to carriers in whichever format the carrier accepts. The platform automatically understands and generates code to connect to an API, allowing intermediaries to build API connections without any coding knowledge and removing the need for developers.

For its winning best pitch, JustParent was awarded a £25,000 investment from Norton Rose Fulbright and a further £25,000 of pro bono UK legal and regulatory advice from specialist lawyers within the firm’s market-leading corporate, regulatory insurance, intellectual property, employment and labour and data privacy practices.

Ed Gaze, CEO of  JustParent. said:

“We’re absolutely thrilled to have won this year’s Insurathon. Both the funding and legal advice have come at such an important time for JustParent.

“We have only just launched and there are so many things we can do with Norton Rose Fulbright's expertise. At the Insurathon, we already got a taste of this - through the series of one-to-one clinics - and I'm looking forward to continuing those discussions shortly.

“A big thanks to the Norton Rose Fulbright team and congratulations to the other finalists, who all presented truly game-changing solutions.”

Nicholas Berry, head of Norton Rose Fulbright’s InsurTech practice and founder of the Insurathon, said:

“Each year, I am astounded by the quality of the entrants and it was brilliant to see products that will really make a huge, positive difference to the wider community.

“For many businesses, even though they are keen to do their best for their employees, the cost of parental leave pay can be a high financial burden. This new offering from our winner, JustParent, can help both businesses and parents by supporting the provision of enhanced parental pay.

“We greatly look forward to helping this exciting new business to develop further in the coming months.”

An ‘honourable mention’ was also given to Lukango, a start-up which provides easy-to-understand, flexible insurance to the small business and sole professional community, a sector which has been traditional underserved in the insurance space. It does this through its proprietary intelligent algorithm which uses data gathered from customers to provide them with the most suitable product for them.

Norton Rose Fulbright has provided more than £250,000 in prize funds through the Insurathon, since launching the competition in 2017. For this year’s event, two previous Insurathon winners - Devin Chawda, CEO, ARMD and Gilbert Harrap, CEO, InsurX - joined the event for a fireside chat with Nicholas to discuss their progress, success and journeys since winning the Insurathon.

Devin Chawda, CEO of ARMD, said:

“ARMD won Insurathon in 2021 when we were only a year into the business and it was such an important moment for us as, not only did it bring some cash and legal support, but more importantly gave us the confidence we needed at the time that we were on the right tracks and to keep pushing hard.”

Gilbert Harrap, CEO of InsurX, said:

"The advice and support we've received from Norton Rose Fulbright off the back of winning their Insurathon competition has tangibly helped us turbocharge our growth as the independent digital exchange for the corporate and specialty insurance market. Norton Rose Fulbright's expertise in supporting multinational insurance corporations all the way down to ambitious startups like us is unrivalled."

Norton Rose Fulbright’s InsurTech practice forms part of its wider Tier 1 ranked Insurance and FinTech practices. Visit here for more information about the Insurathon and previous winners.