Ignite stresses the importance of a gender-balanced industry

Ignite Insurance Systems recently launched Ignition a start-up broker accelerator targeting a 50/50 split of male and female founders.

Burton told Insurance Age that without fresh people in the market, it is easy for the industry to become static.

“We see a lot of people come to us with different ideas and unless you make it more diverse, particularly in leadership roles, you are not going to attract good talent into the marketplace, and you are not going to make the best of what is out there,” she said.

“There is an element of giving the right people the opportunity where they did not have it before, to be able to get their ideas out there.”

Diversity

The launch with its gender balance goal came hard on the heels of Insurance Age’s exclusive research in December underlining the stark nature of broking’s gender diversity gap in leadership.

A Freedom of Information request to the Financial Conduct Authority analysed six key approved senior management functions. It showed that at the end of August women only held 15.7% of the roles in broking. A figure that has fallen since 2020, and is below the current low levels set by the FCA-regulated financial services industry.

Just 8% of broking CEO posts and 5.4% of chair roles were held by women as Insurance Age launched the Broker Diversity Push – Gender Leadership Gap campaign.

Start-ups

The fundamental idea of Ignition is to co-fund new start-up brokerages and offer support in other key aspects of launching and growing their businesses.

Ignition will help start-ups with access to capacity and distribution channels, regulation and compliance and marketing support.

Commenting on the value of helping start-ups, Burton stated that it is important to keep the market up-to-date with new ideas and technology.

“Helping start-ups will allow them to tweak what they already have, they’re not going to get it right the first time and so it will allow them to try new things. You have got to give them the opportunity,” Burton added.

“It is exciting for them, and its good for us in terms of innovation, we love pushing ideas forward and having a start-up as a partner is stimulating.”

Vision

Burton commented that the right candidate for Ignition is someone who knows the market and understand what they want to do.

She concluded: “We will be taking on roughly four start-ups. They need to have the right vision and can work well with us and with other partners to build a good company.”

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