Andrew Harrington

Part of the IT Leaders 100 - a list of the most influential IT leaders in the UK in 2025.

Andrew is focused on growing Ripe's reputation as a leader in insurtech. He is advancing Ripe's technical and digital capabilities by delivering transformational change across customer management, software development and back-office operations.

Andrew led the introduction of 'Juice', Ripe's innovative cloud-based underwriting and insurance distribution platform, and continues to deliver new developments for the proprietary tech. With over 25 years in the IT field, Andrew has held senior roles at a range of leading companies. His strong track-record in driving change and innovation will play a key role in achieving Ripe's growth ambitions.

What's the most exciting part of your current role?

The ability to take a problem and develop an innovative solution without being restricted by legacy applications and old ways of thinking. With our proprietary platform, Juice, we are able to integrate seamlessly with almost any external service and rapidly implement cutting edge tools. This flexibility has allowed us to successfully integrate newly acquired businesses like Craftinsure and GJW Direct in record time, while maintaining our focus on delivering hyper-tailored customer experiences.

What do you consider your greatest IT achievement of the last 12 months?

Successfully migrating ten complex products from our legacy applications over to our new CRM with no material issues – in fact our new business and renewal rates went up following the transition.

We have also recently integrated two newly acquired businesses into our Juice platform in record time, establishing a refined, repeatable process for future acquisitions. This approach ensures we maintain a single source of truth for our technology while avoiding the common pitfall of supporting multiple, not-mutually supporting technology stacks, what I call "Frankenstein-type architecture."

What's the biggest challenge facing IT leaders today, and how are you tackling it?

There's a significant pressure from C-Level executives on IT leaders to be able take AI and implement it into business operations in some way, often without clearly defined problems or opportunities beyond having AI for its own sake. The challenge is determining where AI genuinely adds value.

We should approach this challenge by focusing on targeted applications with measurable ROI - like using AI to transcribe call centre conversations for sentiment analysis, compliance scoring, and agent coaching. This approach allows us to improve customer experience while gathering actionable insights from previously unstructured data.

By testing thoroughly before rolling out at scale, we ensure AI implementations deliver real business benefits rather than becoming expensive experiments.

What piece of technology could you not live without, and why?

Voice recognition software. I use it constantly throughout my day - from dictating emails and documents while multitasking to sending quick messages between meetings. As someone who thinks faster than I type, it's transformed my productivity and allowed me to capture ideas in the moment.

In a leadership role where communication is paramount but time is always at a premium, the ability to articulate thoughts naturally while the technology handles the transcription has been game-changing. It's also a perfect example of AI technology that delivers genuine practical value rather than just novelty.

What excites you most about the future of IT?

The transformational opportunities that AI brings to optimise all areas of business – especially customer experiences. We're already seeing promising results from our AI-driven call transcription and analysis, which helps us understand customer needs better than ever before. As we refine these tools, we'll be able to deliver increasingly personalised insurance journeys that adapt to individual needs.

I'm particularly excited about how we can use AI to take the emotional aspect of insurance purchases, as we are in the business of insuring people's passions, and create digital experiences that maintain that human connection while being more efficient and accessible.

What’s the strangest job you’ve ever had?

I'm afraid I've had a disappointingly conventional career trajectory - no exotic stories about being a llama trainer or professional gymnast before discovering my passion for technology. My career has been entirely in IT, which some might consider strange enough! I've been fortunate enough to have found my path in technology early on and stayed the course.

The strangest role I've had was probably being the sole IT support person at a small company where my job description essentially included "anything with a plug."

If you could instantly master one new skill, what would it be?

Mind reading - but strictly limited to understanding what people actually need from their technology! Half the battle in IT leadership is deciphering what business users mean when they say, "It's not working," or share feedback about improving the user journey. If I could instantly understand the problems that we need to tackle to make our products and services even better for our customers, we'd save countless hours of development time and deliver truly transformative tech. Until I develop this superpower, I'll continue relying on the next best thing: asking lots of questions conducting A-B testing.