At Temy’s Bright Founders Talk, we sit down with Peter Tilbrook, Founder and CEO of Loro, to explore how a lifelong career in insurance can spark a truly disruptive tech journey. Loro creates technology for specialty insurance—a side of the industry that’s far more dynamic than most people expect, spanning areas like marine and aviation risk.

Peter shares how meeting his co-founders in the insurance world—and feeling the pain of outdated systems—became the catalyst for starting the company. He doesn’t shy away from calling out the slow, compliance-heavy software buying process that keeps innovation expensive and change painfully delayed.

In this interview, Peter explains why specialty insurance is growing fast and why entrepreneurial “doers” inside the industry are hungry for better tools. He also outlines Loro’s core mission: making it dramatically easier to launch insurance products digitally, cutting setup from months to days. If you think insurance is dull, Peter’s perspective might change your mind in eight minutes flat.

Insurance Isn’t Boring—It’s Where the Biggest Risks (and Best Ideas) Live

The chat kicks off in peak UK winter mode: grey skies, early sunsets, and that “Christmas jumper” energy that says we’re all just trying to make it to the break. But Peter quickly flips the mood from seasonal small talk to something way more surprising—insurance, of all things, as a genuinely exciting playground. Not the everyday “lost luggage” kind, either. He’s talking specialty insurance, where the stakes are massive and the stories are wilder: marine, aviation, complex financial risk—the kind of work that quietly keeps whole industries moving.

Peter’s been in insurance his whole career, and he’s not pretending it was a childhood dream. In fact, he jokes about it with the kind of dry honesty you only get from someone who’s comfortable in their own skin. But then he drops the real reason he stuck with it: the industry takes you places—literally. He’s traveled to more than 30 countries through this work, met unforgettable people, and gotten a front-row seat to how much of the economy depends on insurance to function. The “boring” label doesn’t hold up once you see what’s actually underneath.

And that’s where Loro comes in. Peter isn’t the polished, corporate-by-the-book type—and he leans into that. He calls himself a disruptor, mostly because he’s tired of watching enterprise software deals crawl along at the speed of endless meetings and overcooked compliance processes. Too many people in the room, too much time wasted, and the final result? Software that costs more than it should and takes forever to change. Loro’s aiming to shake that up by helping the “doers” inside the industry move faster—especially in a specialty market that’s growing quickly and attracting new players who desperately need modern tools to keep up.

The Real Innovation Problem in Insurance Isn’t Ideas—It’s the Layers

Peter’s point lands fast: insurance doesn’t have a “digital” problem, it has a multi-layer problem. This isn’t a simple business-to-customer flow where one slick app fixes everything. In specialty insurance, the experience has to travel through brokers, advisors, partners—sometimes an almost endless chain before it ever reaches the end customer. And a lot of software just isn’t built for that reality. It shines in B2C, then falls apart the moment the process becomes B2B2C (and beyond). That’s exactly the gap Peter says Loro is built to handle—making the digital experience consistent, no matter how many handoffs happen along the way.

Then comes the misconception he really wants to kill: that insurance doesn’t innovate. Peter actually gives the big insurers some credit—because you don’t build massive market share by standing still. He points to moments where the industry had to move fast and get creative, like terrorism coverage after 9/11 and the explosion of cyber risk that forced entirely new ways of thinking. And the innovation isn’t just headline-grabbing catastrophe stuff either. Peter talks about insurers launching products like fertility insurance and renter-focused guarantees—solutions that can genuinely change people’s lives. Insurance, in his view, isn’t just paperwork and premiums. It can be a quiet engine for access, safety, and progress.

Under the hood, Peter keeps coming back to something less glamorous but way more powerful: data. In his words, underwriting isn’t magic—it’s decision-making, and decision-making is only as good as the information behind it. Loro’s role is to take all the messy input coming in from brokers and customers and turn it into structured, usable data that can feed underwriting logic and evolve over time. And yes, the tech appetite is there—insurers want better insights and more profitable risk decisions—but it comes with a real push-pull tension. Regulation, privacy rules, and fast-moving AI legislation make people cautious, while competition and growth make them hungry for change. That tug-of-war is the moment we’re in now, and Peter’s betting the winners will be the ones who move forward without losing control of the fundamentals.

AI in Insurance: Less Hype, More “Why Are We Still Re-Typing This?”

Peter doesn’t pitch AI like it’s going to “blow up” insurance overnight—and honestly, that’s what makes his take believable. He calls insurance a sector full of easy wins, the kind where you don’t need a moonshot to feel real impact. The biggest facepalm? All the unstructured documents flying around and the endless re-keying of the same info by everyone in the chain—policyholder, retail broker, wholesale broker, insurer, reinsurer… and then some. It’s not just inefficient, it’s borderline absurd. So Loro’s focus starts right there: using AI to ingest messy documents and turn them into something usable, so humans can stop doing robot work.

But Peter’s not only interested in saving time—he’s excited about what happens after the data is finally clean and structured. That’s where AI gets more creative: smart insights, models that learn in real time, and underwriting that evolves with what’s actually happening in the world. He gives a sharp example with political violence insurance—imagine blending structured internal data with real-time external signals from the ground, so pricing and risk decisions can adjust faster than old-school actuarial rules ever could. The message is pretty clear: if you’re still relying on slow, static processes, you’re basically trying to predict a live storm with last week’s weather report.

When Barry asks how you even choose a focus in a complex, regulated industry, Peter answers like a founder who’s had to make hard calls. Loro isn’t trying to boil the ocean—they’re picking a part of insurance where there’s room to move: specialty (in the US, the E&S market), where products are more flexible and innovation isn’t instantly crushed by commodity competition. Long-term, he wants Loro to feel like the Shopify moment for insurance: log in, build a complicated product fast, launch it, and grow sustainably—without needing to hire an army. That last bit matters, because Peter points to a quieter issue brewing under the surface: insurance has a talent gap, and younger people aren’t exactly lining up to join an industry they assume is boring. His bet? Better tech doesn’t just speed things up—it makes the whole sector more inviting to the next generation.

“Start Small, Move Fast”: Peter’s Playbook for Talent, Trials, and Taking the Leap

Peter doesn’t sugarcoat why insurance struggles to attract young people—it’s never been the “cool kid” of financial services. While investment banking gets the glamour (and the movie scripts), insurance sits quietly in the background doing the unsexy work that keeps the world running. But Peter flips that narrative with a simple nudge: don’t dismiss it until you’ve looked closer. In the niche corners of insurance, the roles can be genuinely interesting—and yes, the pay can be seriously competitive too. It’s less about chasing hype, more about finding a career with depth, global exposure, and real opportunity.

What’s refreshing is that he doesn’t just talk about the problem—he puts a stake in the ground. In the UK, Peter says Loro wants to make a real dent in the talent gap, starting with a clear commitment: hire one young person every year for the next three years. And he widens the door beyond the usual “get a degree, then apply” route. Internships and apprenticeships at bigger players can be a smart entry point, especially if it means earning earlier and avoiding the debt spiral. In other words: you can get into the industry without following the exact same old script.

On the company side, Peter keeps the same no-drama energy. Loro is a US company with a UK presence (including office space in Lloyd’s of London), and he makes it sound simple: reach out, talk to them, see if it fits. The platform is free to get started, because—his words, basically—why should trying new tech require months of waiting and hundreds of thousands in upfront cost? And when Barry asks for advice to first-time founders, Peter goes straight into practical mode: talk to people who’ve done it, expect to be humbled by the basics (fundraising, formation, all the “grown-up” stuff), and test your idea before you bet your whole life on it. Start with surveys, a small proof of concept, part-time effort—then go all in when you can feel the idea has real traction.