When I meet James Downes on Leadenhall Street in the heart of London鈥檚 insurance district, he is dressed smartly.
But I needn鈥檛 feel bad about my trademark 老九品茶Cloud blue hoodie, jeans and trainers; for James wasn鈥檛 born in a suit.
鈥淭he Blitz was my cohort,鈥� the House of Insurtech founder tells me later, referencing the London club that launched the New Romantic movement in the early 80s and was famed for the eclectic homemade fashion styles of its denizens.
Those Covent Garden Tuesdays helped launch the careers of Spandau Ballet and Boy George. When David Bowie visited, he recruited 鈥楤litz kids鈥� to feature in his Ashes to Ashes video.
More on Bowie later. As for the Blitz, it was where James found a home.
鈥淚 was expelled from school; went to France for six months and worked on boats; then came back and pretty much moved straight up to London in a bedsit somewhere,鈥� he recalls over coffee. 鈥淚 was working at Harrods and really didn’t know anybody at all.
鈥淚 never really fit in. I still don’t fit in. That was why going to the Blitz was really good: none of us judged each other. We were all as wacky and wild and bizarre and glorious as we were. It didn’t matter.
鈥淚鈥檇 dye my hair black with blond roots鈥� then go to work the next day!鈥�
Founder Friday
We are meeting as part of my Founder Friday series, where I try to understand what drives the founder behind a business.
鈥淢y deep technical expertise is computer networks,鈥� says James. 鈥淚’m a completely unqualified techie! I left school with no qualifications and ended up working in the City for a data provider. That was how I accidentally fell into computers.鈥�
After a venture creating computer systems for small businesses didn鈥檛 work out, he launched BDMedia in 1995 alongside the nascent 鈥榳orld wide web鈥�.
鈥淚t started out as a technical agency but then we merged with a traditional marketing business, effectively becoming a digital marketing agency,鈥� he says of what would become Pancentric. 鈥淲e did email search, websites, tools, protocols, PPC (pay-per-click).鈥�
James performed several roles in Pancentric, including CTO; finance, HR and legal director; and strategy and consultancy director.
鈥淚’m supposed to be a techie, but by the 2010s I was running design workshops. I’m not a designer, but I can do all of these things!鈥� he says. 鈥淚t helps me as an entrepreneur now because you have to do everything in the early days.鈥�
Autism
After leaving in 2018, his whole life was put into context – to use his own words – when he was diagnosed as autistic.
鈥淢ost of my issues have always been around communication; so yeah, it was interesting. I can look back now and understand why I was expelled from school.
鈥淚 can remember one interview, for an insurance company, where I made the mistake of arguing with the interviewer because they were wrong about something. If people are wrong about things that are facts – that aren’t contentious – then I’m not very good at saying ‘okay, whatever’.鈥�
鈥淪o there I was, almost 60 years of age, without a job or a pension – and three kids in their early teens to support.
鈥淕etting a job was impossible because I’m quite unemployable: my range of skills is not specific enough! I can do project management, innovation鈥� I鈥檓 not really technical anymore because I stopped doing that such a long time ago. I couldn’t even get an interview.鈥�
So out of necessity he returned to entrepreneurship, and was born.
House of Insurtech
鈥淲hy is it so hard to buy insurance online? Why are the customer experiences so bad?鈥� asks James, a long-time advocate for human-centric design.
鈥淵ou have to follow the question sets that the underwriting engines ask, in the order that they ask them – so the customer experience is being driven by the underlying software. So my starting point was: can we build some software that gives you the premium and rates the risk, without imposing sequence?
鈥淲e built an underwriting engine that is declarative rather than procedural. It might be a website, it might be a mobile app, it might be embedded in another journey – we don’t care. Its job is to collect facts about the risk of a proposer and then call our API with those facts; we’ll then work out the premium, in one go.鈥�
The next question was: what if somebody wants to buy a policy?
鈥淪o we added on eCommerce; then we had to do documents; we had to save those somewhere; then we had to be able to do MTAs (mid-term adjustments); renewals; and cancellations…
鈥淏efore we knew it, we were building out the entire stack!鈥�
Funded by friends, family and some seed investment from SFC Capital, James was joined by co-founder Nigel Coppen, who had spent more than two decades steeped in insurance at Vantage.
By then working with a development house in Belgrade – indeed, James returned from Serbia the day before we meet – the post-COVID funding landscape pushed them to launch and they secured their first client in 2023.
鈥淚t was a disaster for anyone trying to raise any money – basically everybody closed their wallets,鈥� he recounts. 鈥淪o we went: okay, fine, let’s go and find clients. And that’s what we did.鈥�
Those clients include Integra, the home and church insurance specialist, and Lockton.
At the core of the offer today is Insurforce, effectively a no-code platform allowing clients to build their product, integrations and documentation in the cloud. And if they are not able to configure it themselves, House of Insurtech can offer those services.
鈥淥ur Insurforce platform is more modern than others in the market, which were built for a different world,鈥� says James of his InsurTech 50 company.
He continues: 鈥淚 can’t imagine what I鈥檇 do if I wasn’t doing this. How lucky am I that I can be building this platform?鈥�
Ziggy Stardust
Back to Bowie: James went to see the iconic artist on the last Ziggy Stardust tour at the Guildford Civic Hall.
鈥淚t was the gig before he killed Ziggy,鈥� he says with some emotion. 鈥淗e sang Rock 鈥榥鈥� Roll Suicide. Those words were a big thing for me.
鈥淥h no, love – you’re not alone鈥� give us your hands, because you’re wonderful.鈥�