What Cake & Arrow does

Cake & Arrow (legal entity: Alexander Interactive, Inc.) is a boutique experience design consultancy headquartered in New York City that specializes exclusively in the insurance and financial services industry. Founded around 2004 and originally positioned as an e-commerce UX agency, the firm pivoted circa 2013 to focus on insurance and financial services, where it has since completed over 140 projects across 35 insurance companies. The company's core offering is professional services consulting spanning three service lines: Research & Insights (proprietary qualitative research and industry reports), Digital Product Design & Development (UX design, user research, prototyping, and digital product development), and Strategy & Innovation (CX vision and product strategy). Underlying its work is a human-centered design methodology augmented by proprietary frameworks such as the Friction Pattern Analysis Framework (identifying role, offering, and mission friction), the Agent Hierarchy of Needs model, the Financial Literacy Continuum, and Five Design Principles for Human-Centered AI.

Cake & Arrow generates revenue through project-based professional services fees for strategic discovery, user research, experience design, and digital product engagements. Pricing is quote-based and not publicly disclosed; engagements are sourced via direct enterprise sales and relationship-driven business development targeting senior stakeholders at insurance carriers, brokerages, and financial services firms. The firm supports this sales motion with a substantial thought-leadership content engine — research reports, blog posts on cakeandarrow.com/newsfeed, a monthly email newsletter ("The Slice"), LinkedIn/Twitter/Instagram presence, Vimeo multimedia, and conference participation at InsureTech Connect — that generates top-of-funnel demand and reinforces domain authority. Named clients include Travelers, MetLife (including a Japan-market engagement), Chubb, EY, Citi, Northwestern Mutual, Aflac, The General, The Hanover Insurance Group, Main Street America Insurance, American Family Insurance, Symetra, Holmes Murphy, Insuresoft, and VoxSmart.

The firm operates as a founder-led private company (Josh Levine, Founder & CEO) with 51–100 employees and no disclosed outside funding, M&A activity, or parent company. Geographic reach is anchored in the United States with selected international engagements (notably Japan via MetLife). Its strategic positioning emphasizes being an "outsider" bringing fresh design-thinking perspectives to a historically insular industry, with a current thematic emphasis on human-centered AI integration for insurance agents and brokers as evidenced by its 2026 report "The Connective Thread" and the conceptual "Adjacent" AI sidebar design.

Name

Cake & Arrow

Legal name

Alexander Interactive, Inc.

Website

https://cakeandarrow.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2004

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Short description

Cake & Arrow is a New York–based boutique experience design consultancy specializing exclusively in the insurance and financial services industry, offering user research, digital product design, and CX strategy to enterprise carriers, brokerages, and fintech firms.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

UX Design Consulting

NAICS

Graphic Design Services (541430)

SIC

Services-Mailing, Reproduction, Commercial Art & Photography (7330)

akta.pro primary industry

Digital Creative & Experience Design Agencies (Web/App/UX) (MPAAAAAD)

Keywords

• User experience design
• Experience design consulting
• Digital product design
• User research services
• Design strategy consulting

Headquarters

HQ city

New York

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Experience Design Consulting: Project-based consulting engagements for UX design, product innovation, and research services. Cake & Arrow works directly with insurance carriers, brokerages, and financial services firms on digital transformation and experience design projects. Revenue is generated through professional services fees for strategic discovery, user research, experience design, and product development engagements.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels9 records

Core offering

Cake & Arrow is an experience design and innovation agency that helps insurance carriers, brokerages, and financial services firms design digital products and services grounded in real customer and agent needs. The firm delivers research and insights, digital product design and development, and strategy and innovation consulting through human-centered design, qualitative research, ethnographic studies, and prototype testing. Engagements are project-based, with the firm acting as an embedded design partner for enterprise clients across all lines of insurance and adjacent financial services.

Product overview

Cake & Arrow is an experience design agency specializing exclusively in the insurance and financial services industry. Their portfolio consists of proprietary research reports and design consulting services. Key offerings include: (1) Research reports on industry challenges including AI adoption ('The Connective Thread'), digital friction ('Tackling Friction in Insurance Through Design'), climate change impact ('Shifting Ground'), and Gen Z financial behavior; (2) UX design and digital product development services including user research, experience strategy, and platform design; (3) Client-specific digital product projects such as agent portals (Main Street America), sales platforms (MetLife Japan), and financial RegTech interfaces (VoxSmart). The company operates on a project-based consulting model rather than a SaaS platform architecture.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Digital Product Design & Development Human-centered design services for insurance and financial services companies, including user research, experience design, digital product design and development, and innovation consulting for enterprise clients.
• Research & Insights Proprietary qualitative and quantitative research services focused on insurance customer behavior, agent experience, and industry trends to inform product strategy and design decisions.
• Strategy & Innovation Strategy and innovation consulting for insurance and financial services clients, including CX vision development, product strategy, and planning to achieve digital experience goals.

Quantifiable outcome

• Only 8% of independent agents use AI daily despite substantial industry investment, highlighting the adoption gap Cake & Arrow addresses through human-centered AI design
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers15 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature5 records

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• Work & Co: Boutique digital product design agency of comparable size that designs and ships digital experiences for major enterprise and consumer brands. Highly comparable in business model (project-based, design-led) and target buyer (CMO/CTO-level enterprise clients), though not vertically specialized in insurance.
• Huge: Digital experience design and product agency serving large enterprise clients with UX, strategy, and technology services. Comparable scale and service offering to Cake & Arrow, with broader vertical reach and a similar enterprise sales motion.
• Capco: Management and technology consultancy exclusively focused on financial services including insurance. Closely comparable in vertical specialization to Cake & Arrow and a frequent competitor for design-led transformation work in carriers and brokerages.
• ustwo: Independent digital product studio offering UX, product design, and digital product development for enterprise clients. Comparable in boutique scale, project-based delivery, and emphasis on human-centered design outcomes.

Broad incumbents

• R/GA: Global digital agency combining design, technology, and marketing for enterprise transformation. A larger incumbent offering overlapping experience design capabilities to similar enterprise buyers, including financial services.
• Frog Design: Iconic global design consultancy (now part of Capgemini Engineering) providing product, brand, and experience design. Comparable in core design craft but operates at materially larger scale and across many verticals.
• IDEO: Pioneering human-centered design consultancy providing design thinking, innovation, and experience design services. Overlaps with Cake & Arrow on methodology and enterprise client base, though broader in vertical scope.
• Publicis Sapient: Global digital business transformation firm combining strategy, design, and engineering with a strong financial services and insurance vertical practice. Directly competes for enterprise insurance digital transformation mandates at much larger scale.
• Method (GlobalLogic): Global experience design and engineering consultancy (now part of GlobalLogic/Hitachi). Comparable in core UX and digital product design offering but serves a wider set of verticals at significantly larger scale.
• Lippincott: Brand and design consultancy combining brand strategy with experience design for large enterprises, including financial services clients. Comparable in design-led advisory positioning though more weighted toward brand than product UX.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/cakeandarrow
• YouTubevimeo.com/cakeandarrow
• Facebookfacebook.com/cakeandarrow
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/cakeandarrow
• Instagraminstagram.com/cakeandarrow

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Cake & Arrow