Our Story | BrokerCentral

New Ways of Working

Nick Jordan, our MD and co-founder, has been in insurance since 2012, but he’s never been the ‘do things the traditional way’ type.

Back in 2019, he found a scruffy, half-forgotten bathroom showroom in Horsham and pictured turning it into a vibrant coworking space. He was days away from signing the lease (and committing a pretty chunky sum) when Covid arrived and wiped the plan off the table overnight.

In hindsight, that disaster-that-never-happened was probably a blessing.

But the name he came up with for that project, Nuworks, stuck. It still sits behind the scenes as our legal name today. It’s a little reminder of where we started: not with a perfect plan or a stack of funding, but with grit, optimism, and a belief that there’s always a better way of working.

And that’s the thread that runs through BrokerCentral even now.

Refocusing on Insurance

When the pandemic hit, the original coworking dream collapsed, but something more important survived: the desire to build something new, something better, something useful.

Stepping back, Nick realised that the problems he had tried to solve with a coworking space — giving people better tools, better environments, and better ways to work — were the same problems he had seen for years inside insurance. Broken systems. Clunky workflows. Technology that held brokers back instead of lifting them up.

The “Nuworks” idea did not die; it just needed a new direction.

So Nick went back to what he knew best: insurance. And this time, the mission was sharper. Brokers did not need another generic platform. They needed software built with the same grit, independence, and practicality they operate with every single day.

He took the idea to David, a long-time friend and a seriously talented developer. The vision resonated, and David joined as technical co-founder.

Together, they started building in July 2021. It took longer, it was harder than expected, and it forced more course corrections than anyone would like to admit.

As the platform evolved, so did the identity. The name crystallised into BrokerCentral, a platform built to put brokers at the very centre of everything we do.

From a shelved coworking dream to a focused mission in insurance, the arc stayed the same: build better ways of working, stay independent, stay practical, and put real people, not investors, at the heart of every decision.

A Rollercoaster Ride

BrokerCentral made its first real appearance at BIBA, armed with a half-finished product, a tiny stand, and some wildly ambitious energy.

In classic start-up fashion, we decided to make a splash. So we rolled in a full VR motion simulator and branded it the “BrokerCentral Rollercoaster Experience.” It sounded brilliant… right up until we realised that motion simulators and conference hangovers do not exactly mix. Most delegates took one amused look and kept a very respectful distance.

But here is the funny part: the thing that really grabbed attention was not the simulator at all. It was the simple screen quietly looping early screenshots of what we were building. Brokers skipped the gimmick and crowded around the product, pointing, asking questions, and getting excited about the possibilities.

That told us everything we needed to know.

We spent the rest of the show having honest conversations, listening to real pain points, and connecting with people who understood exactly what we were trying to fix. It was not a polished launch, but it was genuine, and it set the tone for everything that came next.

Our first paying clients

Every journey needs people willing to take a leap of faith, and in 2023, a handful of forward-thinking brokerages did exactly that.

Back then, BrokerCentral was still deep in its scrappy early phase. Half-built features. Late-night bug fixes. A roadmap held together by Post-its, caffeine, and sheer stubbornness. But those first clients looked past the rough edges. They saw potential. They saw a team genuinely trying to make brokers’ lives easier with technology that finally made sense.

Their belief was the spark that changed everything.

Each of those early brokerages became more than customers; they became co-pilots. They told us what mattered, what did not, what needed rethinking, and what needed building yesterday. They pushed us, challenged us, and helped us sharpen the platform into something far more powerful than we could have created alone.

That early trust did not just validate the idea; it shaped the direction of the entire product.

Those first clients did not just buy software. They helped build it.

Scaling the vision

With no marketing budget, no investors, and nothing more than a scrappy DIY website, we started to gain real momentum.

Our approach was simple: make our early clients ridiculously happy. Solve their problems. Ship fast. Listen harder. And slowly but surely, word began to spread. What started as a basic CRM began evolving, piece by piece, into a genuinely powerful all-in-one system, handling everything from policies to finance, compliance, claims, and beyond.

Around the same time, we applied (and reapplied… and reapplied) for Innovate UK funding. After three failed attempts, the fourth one finally landed. That grant was a game-changer. It gave us the breathing room to accelerate development, expand the team, and bring in the kind of engineering talent and customer support that could take BrokerCentral to the next level.

Every rejection, every setback, every “not this time” made the eventual win feel even sweeter. And it reinforced the thing this journey keeps teaching us: progress may be slow, but grit counts for a lot.

Breakthrough

By 2025, something genuinely shifted. Brokers were not discovering us through ads or cold outreach, they were hearing about us from each other. Word of mouth became our engine, and for the first time, we felt the momentum of a movement rather than a start-up pulling itself uphill.

At trade shows, people began recognising the name. We would barely step onto the stand before someone would say, “Ah, I’ve heard about BrokerCentral.” Even the bigger players, the well-funded, long-established competitors, started keeping an eye on the small, self-funded team making noise in all the right places.

Today, we are proud to serve over 150 insurance professionals across 25 insurance businesses, with more joining every month. That growth did not come from flashy marketing, giant budgets, or an army of salespeople. It came from trust, earned one broker, one feature, one conversation at a time.

And if there is one thing this journey has taught us, it is this: you do not need deep pockets to build something meaningful. You need determination, you need clients who believe in you, and you need the courage to stay independent, stay honest, and keep putting brokers first.

That is what got us here. And it is exactly what will carry us into whatever comes next.