Jodi Cartwright: The startup world is ‘where my heart is’

Former Hiscox distribution director Jodi Cartwright rejoined the startup arena in October 2023 by becoming chief commercial officer of Tint Financial Services (Tint).

Founded in early 2022, the London-based fintech has an overarching goal to become a broker – it plans to start by becoming an appointed representative (AR), then seek direct FCA authorisation at a later date.

Cartwright tells Insurance Times: “I left a great job and great company to go back to the startup world, which is where my heart is.”

Although Tint’s proposition and team were the main pulls that attracted Cartwright to the business, she explains that innovation and creativity are two elements that she loves about the startup world that were evident in Tint’s practices. 

She says: “It’s just that building and creating something from scratch and then delivering a differentiated proposition at speed.

“It’s hard to get that in a large corporate – to get everybody behind a vision just because of the scale. It is easier with a startup.”

Cartwright’s prior startup experience was at insurtech Coverly, where she worked as its managing director between December 2017 and September 2020.

After Coverly’s parent company – Bibby Financial Services – restructured, the pay-as-you-go insurtech, which offered small business insurance, went bust in July 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic because it was unable to secure funding.

Cartwright continues: ”The team ethos we had at Coverly was brilliant – that’s what I would like to recreate here. I would like to get as much as of my original team back together [as possible].”

Mission statement

According to Cartwright, Tint wants to simplify trade finance to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their supply chains. She tells Insurance Times that more than 30% of potential global trade is currently held back because of its complexity and a lack of funding – an issue the fintech hopes to rectify.

In January 2024, after just six months of trading, Cartwright notes that Tint has already facilitated a global flow of goods valued at £15m.

For Cartwright, therefore, Tint’s proposition is “all about helping clients fuel their growth” through international trade.

To help achieve this goal, the fintech is building an ecosystem to bring together essential international trading components for SMEs.

This includes a combination of trade finance, foreign exchange services, insurance products – such as trade credit insurance – and compliance, logistics and environmental, social and governance (ESG) support. These tools should help SMEs access capital quicker, Cartwright says.

She continues: “It’s quite complicated. There are so many different things that you need to think about when trading internationally, so many different stakeholders. The vision is to have all those services in one place.”

Cartwright believes there is a gap in trade finance education for businesses – some have no knowledge of it whatsoever, while others deal with major banks, which often do not have time to help firms understand it thoroughly.

Linked to this, Cartwright cites underinsurance as another huge problem and industry-wide issue.

An article published by insurer Allianz in July 2023, entitled Underinsurance – a big issue for small businesses, noted that 80% of the UK’s 4.3 million SMEs were underinsured.

Technology, data and relationships

Tint is targeting global, medium-sized businesses with turnover between £1.56m and £78.14m.

Although most of its customers are UK-based, the international nature of some of its clientele means that insurance requirements are “naturally more complex” from a financial perspective – especially for firms trading across the European Union post-Brexit.

Cartwright says: “We’re combining technology, data and relationships – it is a departure from Coverly. Now there is an equal triangle between technology, data and relationships.

“We spend a lot of time upfront with clients so that we really understand the credit risks and we have a close relationship with them.”