The insurance industry is heading toward a risk engineering cliff. With 40% of risk engineers retiring within the next five years and the remainder buried under mountains of paperwork, insurers are facing a growing crisis. The shortage is already causing six-month delays in property and casualty (P&C) inspections, costing billions in lost business and operational inefficiencies. Amid this turmoil, London-based startup nettle is pioneering an AI-powered solution that could reshape how insurers assess and manage risk.
Now, nettle has secured £1.45 million in pre-seed funding to transform the way insurers manage risk assessments. The round was led by Project A, a prominent early-stage VC with offices in Berlin and London, and joined by top angel investors from the insurance and AI industries.
The capital will be used to scale nettle’s core engineering team, enhance its AI platform, and accelerate product deployment with insurers already facing pressure from risk engineering bottlenecks. The company aims to reduce inspection delays and help carriers recover lost revenue caused by inefficient manual processes.
The retirement cliff: An industry at risk
Risk engineering, a cornerstone of commercial insurance, is crumbling under pressure. As veteran engineers approach retirement, insurers are bracing for a knowledge drain that could stall the industry. Compounding this, engineers today spend up to 90% of their time on manual documentation and administrative work, instead of performing on-site assessments. The result: backlogged inspections, rising costs, and missed growth opportunities in a £750 billion global market.
Training replacements is no easy feat. Each new engineer requires over $200,000 in onboarding and two years to become effective, placing further strain on insurers already operating with lean teams.
nettle’s AI: 5x faster and scalable
Enter nettle, a startup using cutting-edge AI to free engineers from paperwork and slash risk assessment turnaround times by 5x. By automating time-consuming manual tasks and enabling remote pre-site analysis, nettle allows risk engineers to focus on what they do best, which is evaluating risk and supporting underwriting decisions.
Features include AI-powered remote risk identification, bespoke inspection guides, mobile evidence analysis, and instant report generation. This increases the volume of inspections each engineer can perform, boosting productivity and underwriting capacity across the board.
From QuantumBlack to game-changing insurtech
nettle was founded in 2024 by Jack Miller and Katya Lait. Miller was previously an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company and Principal Product Manager at QuantumBlack, where he scaled AI insurance tools deployed by over 100 insurers. Lait, also from QuantumBlack, was a Senior Engineer who led development on McKinsey’s first multi-agent GenAI product for the finance sector.
Their shared expertise in AI, insurance, and enterprise product delivery places them in a strong position to tackle the sector’s current challenges.
nettle’s AI platform cuts through chaos
Beyond automation, nettle tackles another silent threat, lost institutional knowledge. With decades of risk data trapped in outdated formats and forgotten reports, the industry is missing a goldmine of insights. Its AI can extract actionable patterns from over 50 years of historical documentation, transforming archived reports into guidance tools for new hires and better underwriting decisions.
A major insurer has already partnered with nettle to pilot this approach, demonstrating how the platform can both eliminate backlogs and unlock 2x underwriting growth.
What’s next?
Looking ahead, nettle is positioning itself to become a core infrastructure player in commercial insurance risk management. As more carriers seek solutions to ageing workforces and operational inefficiencies, its AI-first approach offers a timely and scalable answer. By enabling underwriters and engineers to work faster and smarter, nettle is not just solving a bottleneck,it’s building the future of risk engineering.
“AI has moved beyond hype – it’s delivering incredible efficiencies and transforming how companies use unstructured data at scale,” said Jack Miller, co-founder and CEO of nettle. “Our mission is clear: modernise risk assessment. Insurers who embrace AI will win.”
Malin Posern, Partner at Project A, commented: “nettle is uniquely positioned at the intersection of technology and risk assessment. With a team that has a proven track record of building AI solutions for the industry, nettle is set to help insurers understand and maintain in-depth risk profiles in an automated way and unlock efficiencies across the insurance value chain. We are excited to partner with Jack, Katya, and the team as they seize this significant opportunity.”
