ITC London 2026 Speaker Interview: Sophia Pilkington-Miksa, Chief Product Officer at ManyPets

What’s been the most defining moment of your career so far?

Seeing our long-term investment in technology deliver real business impact this year — shifting ManyPets from a £30m loss to a £6.25m profit. It’s been fantastic to be part of the leadership team unlocking such a step change. It’s a defining moment for the sense of team pride, but also for the learning experience.

At the heart of this transformation is our proprietary pet health and insurance platform. It’s given us richer customer insight and a simple, API-first architecture that lets us move faster than competitors, automating and applying AI across end to end journeys — from acquisition, to claims, and retention.

Over half of our claims are handled with no human touch, while customer satisfaction has risen. That’s the win: efficiency without compromising experience. Our “insuretech DNA” and working practices allow us to deploy many custom models into our value streams, testing and iterating scientifically and quickly. It’s been a fantastic period of seeing the ingredients coming together.

We’ve just completed a migration of all policies onto our platform. We are primed for our next stage of growth into new horizons of innovation. We’ve reached one of our most exciting inflexion points.

What’s one misconception about the industry that you’d love to change?

That insurance is passive, lacks ambition, is a necessary evil, even? When held up against banking, law, medicine, it’s possibly been considered a less glitzy or less intellectual career path for top talent. I was a reluctant freelancer with ManyPets when I started out for these reasons. I’d love to correct that – or to play our part in that at least.

Insurance plays an essential role in the fabric of modern commerce and life. We simply could not operate without it – planes wouldn’t fly, surgeons wouldn’t operate, mortgages wouldn’t go through, to name but a few. Done well, it provides calm and peace of mind in the worst moments.

In pet insurance, that’s especially meaningful. Pets are family — and they don’t have the NHS. Most of us own pets and we are driven by making the pet insurance and health experience meaningfully better.

Pet insurance is complex to do well – you need sharp minds and honed capabilities. It’s inherently complicated selling without knowing the margin at the point of sale. Pet brings unique challenges around knowing what you’re insuring (sometimes the exact breed is unknown), consistency in medical coding / vet practices is more nascent, so it can be challenging to get clear, structured data at claim. These challenges bring opportunities for innovation. Our data maturity and underwriting discipline have been hard-won advantages.

I think the industry in general is innovation hungry and full of bright, talented people pursuing that agenda – legacy systems can make that highly challenging to do at scale, of course.

If you could collaborate with anyone—past or present—who would it be and why?

Famous answer? Someone painfully obvious like Bill Gates — a visionary who pairs intellect and influence with humility and kindness. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Michelle Obama also come to mind.

My actual answer is genuinely who I’m currently collaborating with – otherwise why would I be here 9 years later? Many Pets has a powerful culture. It’s a word thrown about a lot. Can we all spout off our values and purpose statements? Probably. But the power is in the collaborative energy of the everyday and the agility of our work.

We have the fundamentals: Big egos don’t do well here (we’re data, not big voice led), there’s no time for politics, kindness is non-negotiable. Then we have the “secret sauce”: we are ambitious, curious, tenacious - but we don’t take ourselves too seriously and have fun.

I especially enjoy being a part of our leadership team – we are a uniquely complementary combination. We challenge and support each other well. We’re broadly 50:50 men and women – and with women in traditionally male roles – our CEO, CFO, my role as CPO. That’s a source of pride as someone who cares deeply about that agenda.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

Uncertainty is a certainty. Accept it and relinquish the illusion of control early to maximise your leadership impact.

What’s one lesson from outside of insurance that has shaped how you work?

I used to act — badly, but with enthusiasm! Comedy, especially, taught me the power of energy and presence. I like to try to bring that energy and humour into work – I think it creates an environment where people feel at ease, happier, comfortable to give things a go, with a sense of excitement /pull to move forward.

There’s an authenticity that comes through this too, which encourages an open and trusting team. A high-performance team in my mind has 3 key ingredients: 1) clarity of direction; 2) talent; 3) energy. Without any one of these you have a fundamental problem - and the more nebulous energy part is often overlooked in the everyday “feel” of a team and how it operates.

If this article gets you thinking, continue the conversation at ITC London 2027, taking place on 25–26 January at The Brewery, London. 

Interested in sharing your expertise on stage?