FinTech news in insurtech category
Obie, a real estate-focused insurance technology company, has raised $25.5 million in a funding round led by Battery Ventures. Since the company last raise – a $10.4 million Series A – nearly two years ago, the startup says it has gone from securing insurance for over $3 billion worth of property to $20 billion worth.
Similar to how Plaid leverages a user-permissioned data platform for banking, Axle allows users to connect their insurance account to trusted companies in seconds through a developer-friendly API or one of Axle’s low-code or no-code options.
General Atlantic is in talks to lead a $120 million round into Acko, the first tranche of which is about $100 million, a source familiar with the matter said. The round values the Indian startup at $1.5 billion.
The round was co-led by FinTLV Ventures and existing investor Harel Insurance, which were joined by new and existing investors, including Lumir Ventures, Hamilton Lane, New Era Capital Partners, MS&AD Ventures, Core Innovation Capital, Poalim Equity, EquiTrust Life Insurance Co., Akilia Partners and Samsung Next.
As with just about every other sector, the insurance tech industry has been hit hard by the global economic downturn, with the likes of Policygenius and Next Insurance all cutting back their headcount over the past year, while publicly-traded firms such as Lemonade, Hippo, and Root all trading way down on last year. Superscript’s underwriting partners include a slew of well-known names from the insurance world, including AXA, Beazley At Lloyd’s, RSA, and MS Amlin. This is targeted at tech businesses with complex risks that are more difficult to insure such as medical malpractice or professional indemnity, with customers including London-based fintech unicorn Paddle. And this multi-carrier approach, spanning regions and sector-specific expertise, is partly why Shearer thinks that Superscript is well-positioned to flourish as it looks to scale over the long-term.
Pie Insurance, which provides workers’ compensation insurance to small businesses, has closed on a $315 million Series D round of funding. Notably, workers’ compensation insurance is the only commercial insurance mandated for nearly every company in the United States, points out Lauren Kolodny, founding partner at Acrew Capital.
Baldwin describes Boundless Rider as a standalone motorcycle, e-bike and power sports product that can be purchased directly from the company or eventually, bundled with another carrier’s homeowner or car insurance product or purchased through a manufacturer at the time of purchase. CoverTree CEO Adarsh Rachmale – who left his product management role at LinkedIn to focus on building the insurtech with Rishie Modi and Divyansh Sharma – says the goal of the company is to only focus on pre-fab or manufactured home residents. As of 2019, about 10% of new single-family homes (including manufactured homes) were categorized as manufactured homes. Boundless Rider is a new insurance company founded specifically to serve riders of motorcycles, e-bikes and power sport vehicles.
It’s not only the digital platforms that want to sell insurance products, but also to help existing players be more efficient in their distribution of products, allowing them to play a role in increasing the insurance penetration level.
Publicly traded Lemonade has laid off about 60 employees of Metromile, the auto insurtech company it recently acquired – adding to the volatility the technology sector has seen over the past 18 months.
Founded out of Berlin in 2015, Wefox sells various insurance products through a combination of in-house and external brokers, bypassing the direct-to-consumer model of insurtech competitors which include rival German startup Getsafe. European insurance tech startup Wefox has raised $400 million in a series D round of funding, giving the German company a post-money valuation of $4.5 billion. This way of growing users, by getting third-party brokers to use Wefox to advise their own customers, is how CEO and founder Julian Teicke reckons helped the company double its revenues to $320 million last year. To date, Wefox said it has built a network of around 3,000 independent brokers in its native Germany, while in other markets such as Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, it has trained its own brokers.
As a result of the startup’s recent growth and a recent partnership with international financial services provider Allianz, Coalition tells journalist that for the first time since its founding in 2017, it’s planning to offer its cyber insurance policies in the U.K. However, Motta wouldn’t be pressed on whether this will be the company’s last raise before Coalition plots its exit, despite telling journalist back in September that its Series E raise could be its final funding round before the startup prepares to go public. Coalition, a San Francisco-based startup that combines cyber insurance and proactive cybersecurity tools, is preparing to expand outside of the U.S. for the first time following a mega $250 million Series F investment that takes its valuation to $5 billion. The investment, backed by Allianz X, Valor Equity Partners and Kinetic Partners, comes less than a year after the company $205 million Series E raise in September, which valued the company at $3.5 billion.
Ranger will launch in the fall, and offer home insurance, auto insurance and a home warranty policy that it is underwriting itself as an MGA — in other words, the startup won’t be carrying the risk itself, but partnering with a carrier for its own policies. Ranger is today announcing the close of a $5.25 million seed round led by Lerer Hippeau Ventures, with participation from Alex Rodriguez, Firstminute Capital, Slow Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Raven1 Ventures and, of course, Montauk Ventures. Garrison spent 15 years in the insurance business (at AIG) and saw how neglected agents are at legacy insurance companies. Rather than spend a ton on marketing, Ranger is focused on giving agents (who are boots on the ground in the communities they serve) tools to respond more quickly to customers, generate better leads, maximize cross-sell to other products and personalize client services.
Pazcare, a Bangalore-based employee benefits and insurtech platform, announced today it has raised $8.2 million led by Jafco Asia, bringing its valuation to $48 million. Pazcare currently offers health, term and accident insurance and outpatient health benefits. Malik told journalist the new funding will be used to expand Pazcare’s offerings and double its team size. Pazcare’s last round of funding was a $3.5 million seed round raised in October 2021.
Branch, according to co-founder and CEO Steve Lekas, is the only insurance company that he is aware of that can bind insurance through an API, and the only one that can bundle auto and home insurance in a single transaction.
Fintech startup and alternative credit asset manager Viola Credit, has closed its latest $700 million fund which provides asset-based lending capital to FinTech, PropTech, and InsurTech startups.
The startup, which targets motorcycle taxi (boda boda) operators, their passengers and users of other forms of public transport (hereafter commuters), is building a business around daily micro-payments for personal accident covers, with some premiums going as low as $0.1. Macharia’s interest in the sector began in 2018 when he launched a pay-per-use micro insurance product for motor vehicles — which was informed by data and patterns he had observed when he operated an automobile repair shop. The personal accident coverage for motorcycle taxi operators, which requires premiums of $0.1 day ($3 a month) includes medical expenses up to $6,000 annually, and payment for loss of income due to hospitalization following an accident, disability or death. Macharia said their approach was informed by studies showing that boda boda riders desired insurance products that went beyond asset coverage.
By partnering with existing financial services platforms such as Acorns, Truebill and Albert, Trellis aims to help businesses that have an audience that are already engaged, and that they are having financial conversations with, help bring insurance into the conversation.
Consumers purchase Weather Guarantee protection when booking travel reservations and ticketed attractions online and if a weather event, such as rain, is forecasted to occur during the covered experience, Sensible automatically sends a reimbursement. The new capital will allow Sensible to grow its deep pool of top engineering and scientific talent, accelerate the development of its proprietary climate data and risk analytics platform and expand its Weather Guarantee offering into international markets.
He estimates that only 55% can get a life insurance product with a traditional insurance company. The company wants to make it easier to access life insurance products in Europe.
Tokio Marine, a Tokyo-headquartered insurance corporation, said Tuesday it has launched its $42 million corporate venture capital (CVC) fund, dubbed Tokio Marine Future Fund, to invest in early-stage startups around the world.
Using EvolutionIQ, Vykruta claims that a claims adjuster, who may have hundreds of cases active at a time, can better understand short-term disability, long-term disability, workers comp and property and casualty claims.
Lami co-designs products with its underwriting partners, extending unique insurance products to their customers, and through its technological infrastructure, facilitates the distribution of insurance products via a B2B2C approach.
The equity portion was led by Index Ventures and included new investors like Distributed Ventures and its anchor limited partner NFP, HSCM Bermuda, XYZ Ventures and a group of strategic angel investors. The company signed its first customer last July, and Ascend is now in all 50 states and working with customers like Vouch, Cowbell, Newfront, Boost Insurance, NFP, LuckyTruck, Rogue Risk, Portal Insurance and Riskwell. The new financing follows a $5.5 million seed round announced last September to give the company $39 million in total equity funding raised to date. Today, the company announced $30 million in Series A funding along with $250 million in lending to finance insurance premium loans by Hudson Structured Capital Management (HSCM Bermuda).
The continent is already a global leader in mobile money adoption, accounting for the bulk of the mobile money transactions made in 2020 — a year that saw the number of mobile money accounts rise by 43%. For instance, M-Pesa, a mobile money service by East Africa’s biggest telco, Safaricom, does not require internet connectivity for its customers to send and receive money, as well as to pay utility bills — the wallet turns subscribers’ phone numbers into a sort of proxy for bank accounts.