Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
The UK specialty insurance market has a scaling problem. Managing general agents writing SME and commercial business face a fundamental tension: the submission volume required to build a meaningful book is in direct conflict with the human effort required to triage each one consistently. Adding underwriters does not solve the problem. It delays it. Two companies announced a partnership that takes a different approach.
Mulberri, the AI operations platform for underwriting, and Omnyy, a London-based MGA specializing in SME and commercial risks for UK-domiciled businesses, announced a strategic partnership to automate Omnyy’s submission intake, triage, and data structuring from the point of first contact. The deal marks Mulberri’s continued push into the UK market and lands at a moment when demand for scalable underwriting infrastructure among UK MGAs is accelerating fast.
The Problem Mulberri Aims To Solve
Submissions arrive in every format imaginable. ACORD forms, spreadsheets, PDFs, emails, SOVs. Each one requires someone to open it, read it, structure it, and decide whether it fits the appetite before a qualified underwriter touches it. At low volume, that process is manageable. At the volume required to build a commercial SME book, it becomes a bottleneck that no amount of hiring reliably fixes.
Mulberri sits at the front of that process. The platform automatically ingests submissions in any format, structures the data, and triages each submission against the MGA’s defined appetite before a human underwriter is involved. The result is clean, consistent data at every stage of the policy lifecycle, from intake through audit. Underwriters spend their time evaluating risk, not processing paper.
Hamesh Chawla, CEO of Mulberri, identified the pattern his platform was built for. “Omnyy decided to get ahead of that by prioritizing operations first and clean data from day one,” he said. That front-end discipline, structuring data correctly from submission rather than cleaning it retrospectively, is what separates MGAs that scale cleanly from those that hit operational ceilings.
Why Omnyy Chose Now
Omnyy built its model around underwriting discipline and clean data from the start. The partnership with Mulberri extends that discipline into the intake layer. Katie Stone, Chief Operating Officer at Omnyy, was direct about the operational logic. “Partnering with Mulberri allows us to automate submission intake and triage at the front end,” she said, “so our underwriters can focus their time where it adds most value.” The integration connects directly to Omnyy’s existing systems. No rip and replace. The platform is configured around Omnyy’s appetite, lines of business, and rules.
That approach, layering AI onto existing infrastructure rather than replacing it, reflects a broader maturation in how MGAs are thinking about technology. The question is no longer whether to automate. It is where to start and how to avoid disrupting the underwriting workflow in the process.
The UK Market Context
The timing is not coincidental. The UK SME insurance market is under growing pressure from multiple directions simultaneously. The UK government’s longitudinal cyber security survey flagged rising cyber insurance uptake among UK businesses, alongside persistent concerns about supplier risk and underinsurance in the SME segment. A separate UK government report tied cyber resilience directly to economic growth, making the case that underwriting capacity for SME cyber and commercial risks has national economic relevance.
The BIBA conference earlier this year saw MPs call directly for wider cyber insurance adoption across UK businesses, with cyber resilience framed as a prerequisite for the UK’s growth agenda. A UK cyber insurance growth report published by this outlet found that demand for coverage is rising, but that operational capacity constraints among MGAs and carriers risk limiting market growth. Mulberri’s entry into the UK addresses exactly that constraint.
SME Risk Is Growing Faster Than Coverage
The Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2025 documented what this publication covered in depth: ransomware, AI-driven attacks, and regulatory fines are hitting SMEs harder and more frequently. The risk profile of UK SME commercial businesses is rising. The operational capacity to underwrite it at scale has not kept pace. That gap is where MGA underwriting automation creates direct market value.
Mulberri is not new to the SME insurance space. An earlier partnership with Qualys brought cyber insurance discounts directly to SMEs by linking security posture data to underwriting decisions. A partnership with Acronis extended that model further, streamlining cyber insurance access for small and medium businesses through an integrated security and coverage workflow. The Omnyy partnership is a different kind of play focused on the underwriting operations layer rather than the distribution or risk assessment layer, but it fits the same strategic logic. AI handles the repeatable work. Underwriters handle the judgment.
What This Means For The UK MGA Market
The Mulberri and Omnyy partnership is a signal worth tracking for three reasons. First, it confirms that AI underwriting automation is arriving in the UK specialty market as an operational reality, not a pilot program. Second, it shows that London MGAs are moving to address scaling constraints before they become growth ceilings, rather than after. Third, it demonstrates that the infrastructure investment required to automate underwriting operations is now accessible to MGAs of Omnyy’s size and stage, not just large carriers.
For brokers placing SME and commercial risks in the UK, the operational quality of the MGA on the other side of the submission matters. Clean data, consistent triage, and appetite-aligned decisions at speed are competitive advantages that flow directly to placement outcomes. MGAs investing in that infrastructure now are building a durable edge over those still processing submissions manually.
The UK SME insurance market is growing. The question is which MGAs will have the operational infrastructure to grow with it.
FAQ -MGA Underwriting Automation
Mulberri, an AI underwriting operations platform, and Omnyy, a London-based MGA specializing in UK SME and commercial risks, announced a strategic partnership in May 2026. Omnyy will deploy Mulberri’s platform to automate submission intake, triage, and data structuring across its underwriting operations.
Mulberri automatically ingests submissions in any format, including ACORD forms, PDFs, spreadsheets, and emails. It structures the data and triages each submission against the MGA’s defined appetite before a human underwriter is involved. The platform works with existing systems without demanding a full technology replacement.
UK MGAs writing SME and commercial business face a tension between the volume of submissions needed to build a meaningful book and the human effort required to consistently triage each submission. Automation addresses that bottleneck at the source, enabling MGAs to scale without proportional increases in headcount.
Omnyy is a London-based managing general agent specializing in SME and commercial risks for UK-domiciled businesses. The company was founded on the principle that underwriting discipline and operational excellence are inseparable.
The UK SME market faces rising cyber risks and growing demand for commercial insurance coverage. MGA underwriting automation provides capacity providers with cleaner data and more consistent triage, supporting better risk selection and faster placement decisions for SME accounts.
Yes. Mulberri has previously partnered with Qualys to offer cyber insurance discounts to SMEs linked to security posture data, and with Acronis to simplify cyber insurance access for small and medium businesses through an integrated security and coverage workflow.
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