Saber is the North West's Technology StartUp of the Year — and its Overall StartUp of the Year.

We set out to fix one thing: the gap between a document arriving and someone actually working it. At millions of near-identical cases on a clock, that gap is where cost, delay and compliance risk pile up — and legacy tooling can't close it. Being named the North West's best startup is recognition that the approach works, and that the problem matters.

What the judges were looking at

Saber is the workflow engine for high-volume claims and collections. It automates the document- and process-heavy work — intake, triage, eligibility, evidence, payout — with a human in the loop, on top of the systems firms already run. No rip-and-replace, live in weeks, and every action logged.

The results behind the award come from real operations, not a demo: across live deployments Saber has processed millions of cases, with teams handling many times their previous caseload — no extra headcount — and classification accuracy consistently above 98%, reaching value in weeks rather than a multi-month platform rollout.

"This is recognition for the firms who trusted us with real volume, and for a team that refused to accept that scale has to mean more headcount. We're only getting started." — Mitch Shephard, Co-founder, Saber

Two years, one thesis

In two years Saber has generated £26m in revenue working alongside some of the UK's busiest claims and litigation operations — proof of a first-mover position in a market that is only getting larger as the redress wave builds. The thesis has held from day one: volume is the whole game, and the firms that win will be the ones that scale their throughput without scaling their cost base.

Where we go next

The same engine extends naturally to two markets under real pressure right now. In debt collection, rising arrears and tightening conduct rules are squeezing cost-to-collect just as volumes climb. In insurance, record claims volumes are colliding with a shrinking, ageing claims workforce. Both are document-heavy, compliance-bound and built for exactly the kind of human-in-the-loop automation Saber was designed around. More on each in the coming weeks.