Rosella raises AUD $3.7 million for AI insurance brokerage

Rosella has raised AUD $3.7 million in pre-seed funding in a round led by Peak XV Partners and Intact Private Capital.

The Sydney- and Austin-based startup is building a commercial insurance brokerage that uses artificial intelligence to automate work still handled manually across much of the industry. Its system can submit client information across more than 100 carrier portals, compare policies, identify coverage gaps, and support sales staff during client calls.

The company is targeting the U.S. commercial insurance market, which it estimates at USD $215 billion. It focuses on small and mid-market businesses in sectors such as construction, manufacturing, and logistics, where insurance needs are often more complex and service can be uneven.

Commercial insurance brokerage remains heavily reliant on manual processes, particularly for submissions, policy comparison, and servicing. Those tasks are often spread across fragmented systems and carrier-specific formats, slowing responses and adding to brokers' workloads.

One of the biggest pain points is the need to enter the same client information into multiple insurer systems. Rosella says its software handles that process across more than 100 portals, reducing a major source of repetitive work.

The company also says it has cut the time needed to generate certificates of insurance from 30 minutes to under two minutes. Its AI tools also read policy documents, compare coverage terms, and flag exclusions or gaps that might otherwise take longer to identify.

Service Model

Rather than selling software on its own, Rosella is positioning itself as a brokerage with its own technology stack. The model is designed to keep brokers focused on sales, client relationships, and underwriting judgment while software handles routine administrative work.

That pitch comes as insurers and brokers look for ways to improve productivity without removing human involvement from complex commercial placements. Commercial policies can be lengthy and difficult to compare, and the rise of harder-to-place risks has added to the burden on brokerage teams.

Rosella points to growing risk complexity in the U.S. market. Nuclear verdicts exceeded USD $31 billion in 2024, it says, while the excess and surplus market has expanded as standard carriers pull back from higher-risk categories.

Sean Stuart, co-founder of Rosella, said the company is part of a broader shift in how technology is applied to service industries.

"Software as a product is stalling. Services are booming," Stuart said. "The next $100 billion company will not sell software licenses. It will sell a service powered by software, built specifically for the people doing the work."

He also argued that the underlying opportunity lies in navigating the fragmented systems used by insurers rather than relying on simpler consumer-facing AI tools.

"The holy grail is not chatbots," Stuart said. "It is browser agents that can navigate a hundred carrier portals, each one different, each one changing daily."

Founders

Rosella was founded by Stuart and Chris Dwyer, who met at university nearly a decade ago. Stuart previously worked as a venture capitalist focused on AI and software, while Dwyer was a founding engineer at Constantinople and earlier led AI product development teams at Accenture.

Rosella says its platform learns from interactions across the brokerage process, including quotes, acceptances, and rejections. It argues that this feedback loop can improve pricing accuracy and recommendations over time while capturing information that would otherwise remain scattered across documents, emails, and individual brokers.

The focus on smaller accounts is central to the strategy. In commercial insurance, larger clients often receive more attention because they generate higher revenue, while smaller businesses may face slower service despite having specialised insurance needs.

Rosella says lower operating costs could allow it to serve those customers more consistently. Stuart described that as a way to extend a higher level of brokerage support beyond the largest corporate accounts.

"For the first time, every business in America can get the quality of brokerage service that used to be reserved for Fortune 500 companies," Stuart said. "Lower costs mean we can profitably serve the accounts legacy players ignore, and deliver a materially better outcome."

He added that the company sees AI as a way to make brokers more effective rather than remove them from the process.

"Everyone asks how AI replaces workers," Stuart said. "We ask how it makes them extraordinary. Our AI turns a one-year rep into a ten-year veteran."