Mazda joins Wrisk’s growing OEM insurance empire

Mazda has appointed Wrisk to power a new monthly subscription car insurance service for buyers of new and used vehicles across its UK dealer network, the manufacturer confirmed this week - the latest in a rapid succession of automotive brands to turn to the London-based insurtech as the race to own the car insurance relationship at point of sale accelerates.

Available now through the Mazda website, the proposition offers fully comprehensive cover on a rolling monthly basis, with no charges for changes, renewals or cancellations. Crucially, it is also open to the estimated 257,200 existing Mazda owners currently on UK roads, regardless of when or where they originally bought their vehicle - a significant addressable market the brand admits it has so far had little direct relationship with.

The programme builds on Mazda's existing five-day Driveaway Insurance offering. Customers who register for a Driveaway policy will automatically receive a subscription quote, with policies activated entirely online. Accident management services are also included, routing vehicles in need of repair to Mazda Approved Accident Repair Centres where work is completed by Mazda-trained technicians using genuine parts supplied through the dealer network.

Jeremy Thomson, managing director at Mazda Motors UK, said the partnership would help the brand "build closer relationships with customers and play a pivotal role in the supply and fitting of genuine Mazda parts" - a phrase that hints at the deeper commercial logic behind the arrangement: insurance as a gateway to aftersales retention.

Wrisk's expanding automotive empire

The Mazda deal is the latest chapter in what has become a remarkable growth story for Wrisk, the digital-first embedded insurance platform founded in London in 2016. By the first half of 2024, the company had already surpassed £60 million in annualised gross written premium, with H1 revenue growing 219% year-on-year and its annualised revenue run-rate tripling compared to the prior year. Full-year results, published in March 2025, confirmed that triple-digit revenue growth was sustained across 2024 as a whole, with more than 100,000 policies written during the year.

Its client roster now reads like a who's who of the global automotive industry. Wrisk's current OEM partners include BMW Financial Services, Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo FS, Mercedes-Benz Insurance Services, Stellantis Financial Services UK, Suzuki GB, Toyota Insurance Services - and now Mazda. That breadth of coverage across competing brands speaks to the position Wrisk has carved out as the infrastructure layer for OEM-branded insurance in the UK.

Most recently, Kia UK partnered with Wrisk in February 2026 to introduce a subscription-based car insurance and accident aftercare product for buyers of new and used vehicles, offering a monthly rolling policy with a guaranteed 12-month price and no penalty or transaction fees. And just last month, Volkswagen Financial Services UK named Wrisk as its partner for a new van insurance proposition, extending the platform's reach into the commercial vehicle segment.

The Stellantis tie-up, reported by Insurance Business UK in May 2025, was particularly striking in scale: a multi-year deal covering 12 brands simultaneously - Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Citroën, DS Automobiles, FIAT, FIAT Pro, Jeep, Leapmotor, Maserati, Peugeot, SPOTiCAR and Vauxhall.

Big money backing the bet

The commercial momentum has attracted serious institutional capital. In July 2025, Wrisk raised a £12 million Series B round led by Alma Mundi Ventures and Opera Tech Ventures, earmarked for European expansion and deeper data and intelligence capabilities. The company had already established a commercial team in Munich and secured regulatory licences across the EU.

Then, in January 2026, Allianz Holdings plc announced it had joined the Series B as a strategic investor - a particularly notable development given that Allianz has served as Wrisk's primary underwriter for nearly a decade. Ulf Lange, managing director of personal lines at Allianz UK, described Wrisk as having "built a compelling platform at the intersection of insurance, data and the automotive sector." The backing of a major global carrier signals that mainstream insurance incumbents now see embedded OEM platforms not as a disruptive threat, but as a distribution channel worth owning a stake in.

Insurance Business UK has previously tracked Wrisk's growth from its early insurtech roots, including its pivot away from a direct-to-consumer contents app to focus entirely on white-labelled B2B2C automotive solutions - a strategic shift that, in hindsight, proved transformative.

Does OEM insurance actually work?

The more pressing question for the industry is whether consumers are buying what manufacturers are selling.

The historical evidence has been mixed. Research from a 2022 UK insurance consumer survey found that only 2.7% of UK motor insurance customers purchased their policy directly from their car manufacturer in that year. The figures were low partly because the infrastructure for frictionless OEM insurance at point of sale simply did not exist at scale.

Tesla's US experience offered a more encouraging template. The EV maker entered insurance in 2019 and by Q4 2022 was selling its insurance product to 17% of its US customers - a figure that illustrates the potential of a truly integrated, data-led proposition when the brand relationship is strong and the product genuinely differentiated.

More broadly, market analysts are now watching this space closely. Embedded insurance propositions integrated at the vehicle point of sale are expanding at a 3.16% compound annual growth rate, according to Mordor Intelligence, as the frictionless digital experiences consumers expect from other sectors begin to permeate the car-buying journey. Deloitte, meanwhile, has estimated that if 20% of the US personal auto market shifts to embedded insurance by 2030, at least $50 billion in premiums could be diverted away from conventional distribution channels - a signal of the structural disruption at stake even before European markets are factored in.

Analysts describe OEM moves into insurance as a strategic "land grab" for the future of mobility, combining insurance revenue, vehicle data, and long-term customer relationships in a way that traditional insurers find difficult to replicate. The manufacturers gaining early ground - and the platform providers that power them - stand to accumulate structural advantages in data, pricing accuracy, and aftersales stickiness.

The aftersales play

For Mazda, as for Kia, Stellantis, and the others, the commercial case for branded insurance stretches well beyond any margin on the policy itself. By directing accident repairs to manufacturer-approved repairers and genuine parts, each brand in effect creates a pipeline of warranty-quality work flowing through its own dealer and bodyshop network - a material benefit at a time when independent repairers and non-OEM parts are squeezing aftersales margins.

Thomson made this explicit, noting that the Wrisk partnership would "enable Mazda to build closer relationships with customers and play a pivotal role in the supply and fitting of genuine Mazda parts."

Robert Cottrell, vice president commercial at Wrisk, described the platform as "digital-first, legacy-free" and built specifically for the automotive sector - language the company deploys consistently across its OEM partnerships but which carries genuine technical significance: unlike incumbents operating on aging policy administration systems, Wrisk's infrastructure was designed from scratch for embedded, real-time insurance distribution.

What it means for the broader market

For traditional motor insurers and brokers, the trajectory is clear. The comparison site model that has dominated UK motor distribution for two decades is being outflanked at the point of purchase - before the consumer ever reaches an aggregator. As Insurance Business UK has previously noted in its coverage of the UK insurtech landscape, Wrisk is among the firms brokers most need to watch, precisely because its model removes the need for a broker intermediary altogether in the new-car purchase context.

The regulatory environment is also shifting in a direction that favours embedded models. The FCA's Consumer Duty framework, which came into full force in 2023, has increased scrutiny on the monthly payment surcharges that have historically characterised annual policies paid in instalments - a pricing practice that Wrisk's subscription model sidesteps entirely by design, potentially giving OEM-branded offerings a compliance advantage over traditional distribution in how they present value to customers.

Whether Mazda's take-up rates match the ambition will depend partly on how effectively its retailer network introduces the product at the point of sale, and partly on whether the brand's customer profile - typically older, loyal, and pragmatic - proves receptive to a digital-first insurance journey. With 257,200 existing UK owners in scope and the Mazda6e - the brand's first long-range electric saloon, priced from £38,995 and due in UK showrooms this summer - about to expand the customer base, the potential is substantial.

The deal also raises a question for competitors still sitting on the sidelines: as Wrisk's OEM roster grows and its data advantage compounds, the window for rivals - whether incumbent insurers, other insurtechs, or manufacturers building their own in-house capability - may be narrowing faster than they realise.

Related reading:

• Stellantis Financial partners with insurance tech firm Wrisk
• Wrisk achieves major growth milestone for H1 2024
• Insurtechs in the UK: key insurance tech firms brokers need to watch
• How insurtech Wrisk grew "from an idea on a wall to a real concept"
• Flow Capital finalises Wrisk investment