Hartford, Chicago or Des Moines? Best US Base for UK Insurtech

Insurance in the United States is not regulated the way British companies expect.

There is no federal insurance regulator. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners is governed by the chief insurance regulators of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and five territories. That is 56 separate jurisdictions.

The NAIC sets standards and supports its members. It does not license insurers. That authority sits with each state, and a carrier must satisfy each one individually.

For a UK insurtech, that structure is the whole opportunity. Complexity that carriers have to manage is software that somebody has to sell them.

Four questions to answer before you pick a city

Are you selling to carriers, brokers or MGAs? These three cities specialise differently, and the buying committees do not overlap much.

Do you need actuarial and underwriting talent, or engineers? Insurance domain expertise and software engineering cluster in different places, and the former is harder to hire.

Which lines of business are you in? Specialty and commercial buying concentrates in Chicago. Life, annuities and retirement concentrate in Des Moines.

How much HR admin can you absorb? Two of these three states changed their pay transparency rules recently, and one of them changed in October 2026.

Hartford: the carriers, and a UK company that just did this

Hartford calls itself the insurance capital of the world and the concentration data supports it.

Connecticut employs more than 53,500 insurance staff across over 2,900 insurance establishments, according to AdvanceCT. Hartford and Stamford rank first and second nationally for insurance worker productivity. The state has the highest concentration in the US of insurance jobs, actuaries and underwriters.

Aetna, Travelers and The Hartford are all headquartered in the city, with Cigna in nearby Bloomfield. Connecticut-based carriers generate more than $22 billion in state GDP annually.

The case study worth reading

DQPro, a London-based provider of data monitoring software for the property and casualty specialty market, chose Hartford for its US expansion in February 2026.

The reasons its chief executive gave are the ones that should matter to any UK insurtech: proximity to specialty carriers, a skilled workforce and established industry partnerships.

The support structure is worth noting too. DQPro worked with the InsurTech Corridor, Connecticut Insurance and Financial Services, the MetroHartford Alliance, AdvanceCT and the UK Department for Business and Trade. Our guide to leveraging government resources for US hiring covers how British companies use that route.

Employment rules in Connecticut, which changed in October 2026

Connecticut moved from reactive to proactive pay disclosure on 1 October 2026, and the change is significant.

Employers must now include a good-faith wage range in job postings, together with a general description of benefits covering health insurance, retirement, fringe benefits and paid leave. Foley and Lardner’s analysis confirms there is no employer size threshold, so a two-person US team is covered.

Employers with 100 or more employees face an additional duty to produce an employee guide explaining at least 10 commonly used pay codes.

The rule reaches remote roles that report to a Connecticut-based supervisor, even where the work happens elsewhere. Applicants and employees have a private right of action with a two-year limitation period.

Connecticut’s minimum wage is $16.94 per hour, the highest of the three states here, per the US Department of Labor. Our guide to US pay transparency laws covers how the state rules compare.

Chicago: specialty, commercial and the broking centre

Chicago is where commercial and specialty insurance gets placed, which makes it the right base for anyone selling into that side of the market.

CNA Financial and Kemper are both headquartered in the city. Ryan Specialty, one of the larger specialty insurance organisations in the country, is based there. Zurich North America operates from the Chicago area.

For a UK insurtech selling into the London specialty market’s American counterparts, that concentration is more useful than raw headcount. Specialty buyers are a small community, and being in the city where they meet shortens sales cycles.

Chicago also gives you something Hartford and Des Moines do not, which is a large general software engineering pool. If your product needs engineers as well as domain experts, that matters.

Employment rules in Illinois

Illinois requires pay transparency in job postings and has done since 1 January 2025.

Employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale and a description of benefits. The Illinois Department of Labor confirms the rule covers work performed at least partly in Illinois, and roles reporting to an Illinois-based supervisor. Postings and disclosures must be kept for five years.

Illinois also sets a non-compete earnings threshold of $75,000, per Epstein Becker Green. Our state-by-state non-compete guide covers how the thresholds compare. Below that figure, an agreement will not hold.

The state minimum wage is $15.00 per hour.

Des Moines: the concentration nobody outside insurance knows about

Des Moines is the surprise on this list, and the numbers are not close.

The metro has the highest concentration of insurance employment of any US metro, according to the Greater Des Moines Partnership. More than 80 of Iowa’s insurance companies are headquartered there. It ranks fourth nationally for concentration of insurance underwriters and has six times the national concentration of actuaries.

Finance and insurance contributed $25.3 billion of the region’s $90 billion GDP in 2024. Principal Financial Group, Nationwide, Athene, EMC Insurance and Wellmark all have significant operations there.

Office rent runs about 24% below the national average, and the Global Insurance Symposium drew more than 5,154 attendees from over 20 countries in 2026.

Who Des Moines suits

Des Moines suits companies selling into life, annuity, retirement and benefits carriers, which is where its concentration sits.

It suits them especially if the product needs actuarial input. Hiring an actuary in Des Moines is materially easier than hiring one almost anywhere else in the country.

The limitation is engineering. Des Moines has a smaller general software talent pool than Chicago, so a product team will be harder to build there than a domain team.

Employment rules in Iowa

Iowa applies the federal minimum wage of $7.25, less than half the Connecticut rate.

There is no state pay transparency law requiring salary ranges in job adverts, and no statutory earnings threshold governing non-competes. Employment is at-will, as our at-will employment guide explains. Of the three states here, Iowa carries much the lightest administrative load.

Hartford, Chicago and Des Moines at a glance

Your regulatory map and your office map are different things

The temptation is to base yourself where your first carrier client sits. That is usually the wrong instinct.

Because insurance is licensed state by state, your customers will be spread across jurisdictions regardless of where you sit. A carrier in Hartford writes business in 40 states, and the person who buys your software may sit in any of them.

What location actually buys you is talent and community access, not proximity to a single account. Choose for the people you need to hire and the events you need to be at.

That also means you can hire across more than one city without an entity in each. An Employer of Record lets you put a domain expert in Des Moines and an engineer in Chicago without incorporating in either state. Our guide to how an Employer of Record works explains the mechanics.

When the team grows, the EOR versus own entity decision sets out the point at which the economics change. There is also a separate registration question, covered in our guide on when a UK company needs to register in the US.

For a neighbouring sector, our guide to choosing a US base for UK fintech covers a similar state-by-state licensing problem in money transmission.

Talk to us before you commit to a city

We help UK and European insurtech companies hire US staff without setting up an entity, and we advise on which state suits the roles being recruited.

Get in touch with our team to talk through your options.