This month, Scrub AI hits the big five! It’s an exciting milestone and the perfect moment to pause and reflect on how far we’ve come.

The idea began with a simple question. Could AI and machine learning help fix one of the most frustrating parts of insurance, cleaning and preparing data? It was something Nicola, our COO, had experienced first-hand while training as an underwriter. She raised it with Andrew, our CTO, who had a background in machine learning and NLP. The idea clicked.

They brought in Alex, our CEO, who began building the product and has led its development ever since. That was the beginning of a tool built to help insurance teams automate the repetitive, manual work of cleaning and preparing risk and exposure data, including SOVs and bordereaux.

Five years on, that mission still drives us. The team is bigger, the product stronger, and the scope of what we’re solving is broader.

The story so far

Scrub has grown through conversations, challenges, a bit of trial and error, and plenty of lessons along the way. While we could fill pages with the full journey, here are a few moments that shaped who we are today.

It all started with the underwriting product, shaped by Nicola’s own experience working with risk and exposure data. Joining Lloyd’s Lab Cohort 6 gave us a rare opportunity to get that early version into the hands of real users, gather feedback, and learn fast. It helped us stress-test the idea in the wild, and sharpen our thinking from the ground up.

Soon after, our first clients came on board, including some of the leading syndicates in the London Market. In a risk-averse market like insurance, that early trust meant a lot. It gave us the opportunity to shift the product from an Excel add-in to a cloud-based platform, making Scrub more flexible, easier to deliver, and ready for the more advanced features we’d been thinking about from day one.

From there, things started to build. We started showing up at events and speaking at panels. These moments gave us a platform to talk more openly about the everyday challenges of working with unstructured data, and to show what we were building to help fix them.

In 2024, brought our first industry award, a proud moment for the team. Since then we’ve been shortlisted for multiple awards, and named among the top 100 insurtechs and top 50 data tech lists. We care about the work, and we care about doing it well, so being recognised like this shows that we’re shaping something bigger.

As we kept listening, we noticed a familiar problem coming up again and again. Delegated authority data brought many of the same challenges we’d already been dealing with. Earlier this year, we responded by launching a second product, designed specifically for delegated authority teams and built on everything we’d learned so far.

More recently, we closed a new funding round, raising an additional £1 million and bringing our total to over £2.7 million. Every penny has come from angel investors, something we’re hugely proud of. Our cap table is full of people we deeply respect including ex-founders, London Market execs, serial entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and more. They’ve backed not just what we’re building, but how we’ve chosen to build it. We’ve learned so much from them, and wouldn’t be where we are today without their support. Cheers to all of them! 🥂

There’s more to tell, always. But none of this would have happened without the team. Scrub today is shaped just as much by the people who joined along the way as by those who started it, people who bring expertise, humility, and energy to everything they do.

Reflections from the founders

To mark the occasion, we asked each of the co-founders to reflect on the journey so far.

What’s a moment from the last five years that made it all feel real?

“One of the big turning points for me in the journey was signing our first clients – three large syndicates in quick succession of each other in early 2022, just months after launching the product. Signing those first contracts, along with the interest and the positive feedback we received from the wider market made it all feel very real, very quickly!

We’ve continued to build strong relationships with cat modelling experts and underwriting teams in the London market ever since, and listening to the problems they face and discussing potential solutions is still one of my favourite parts of the job.” – Nicola Turner, COO & Co-founder.

What’s one decision, big or small, that you’re proud we made?

“One of the most important technical decisions we made early on was how to structure the AI behind Scrub. Instead of building one large model to handle everything we broke the problem down and used smaller, self-hosted models to tackle each part. It meant we could move faster, keep customer data secure, and easily add new outputs without retraining. These decisions have aged like fine wine.” – Alex Ley, CEO & Co-founder.

What’s surprised you most about how this journey has unfolded?

“When we started Scrub, AI and NLP weren’t getting nearly the attention they are today, especially in insurance. The biggest surprise for me has been how quickly things have moved since then. The rise of GenAI has completely reshaped the landscape, much faster than I ever expected. We’ve had to adapt quickly and stay close to the research to keep up.” – Andrew Pelton, CTO & Co-founder.

Looking ahead

We’re still focused on what got us started, to modernise how data is cleaned and prepared, starting with insurance.

While insurance is where we began, and remains our priority, we believe the potential is bigger. We’d love to make it possible to clean and standardise any data, from any source, in any industry. We’re always open to seeing where else Scrub could be useful, whether that’s in other parts of insurance or somewhere entirely new.

We’re also building a space to share more about AI, how it works, how we use it, and where it sometimes gets misunderstood. It’s something we care about, and we’re looking forward to sharing more. Watch this space.

Thanks to everyone who’s been part of the story so far, the team, our clients, and everyone who’s backed us along the way. We’re just getting started.