Techsurance - your weekly insurance technology readings🗞
May 10 - May 16
Hello everyone,
Still on holidays these days, hence the delay in publishing last week’s Insurtech digest. The Insurtech space keeps on pulsing, gotta keep up with the pace 😎
Wish you a great rest of the week!
💲 VC fund-raising and M&A news
Ethos, the US life Insurtech, raises $200 million Series D led by General Catalyst, at a $2 billion valuation. P&C insurance usually takes the spotlight, but life insurance startups are also growing and raising larger rounds. Ethos modernizes the life insurance process, skipping for instance medical exams and blood tests for users. The company expects to issue $20 billion of life insurance coverage in 2021, and is nearing $100 million in annualized gross profit 📰 Crowdfund Finder
Kin raises $63.9 million in Series C funding. Kin sells directly to consumer home insurance in a couple of US States, focusing on complex and risky homes 📰 Crunchbase
Planck raises $20 million. Planck offers carriers, brokers and MGA an AI platform for commercial insurance underwriting. It draws on a wide range of sources for data, including online images, text, videos, reviews and public records, to generate risk-related insights for business using just a name and address. Planck plans to use the investment to expand into Europe, the U.K. and the Asia/Pacific region, and to build out its U.S. team 📰 Insurtech Insights
SightCall, the SF-based video call platform, raises $42 million Series B led by InfraVia Capital Partners. Founded in 2008, the company provides Augmented Reality and live video assistance for insurance claims, customer service, tech support and field service teams 📰 Coverager
Huma Therapeutics raises $130 million Series C led by Bayer and Hitachi Ventures to scale its modular platform. Huma provides a modular platform which can power digital 'hospitals at home', and supports the pharmaceutical and research industries to run the largest ever decentralized clinical trials. Huma’s digital 'hospital at home' was co-created with clinicians and has been independently shown to almost double clinical capacity, reduce hospital readmissions by over a third and has patient adherence levels of over 90%. The implications for health insurance are far-reaching 📰 PR Newswire
Birdie, a digital care companion for the elderly living backed by Kamet Ventures, raises $11.5 million led by Index Ventures. Since launching, Birdie has partnered with almost 500 providers across the UK, and now supports more than 20,000 older people every week 📰 Coverager
🚀 New products, partnerships, collaborations and more
After signing a large partnership with Covéa in France, Tractable partners with Warta, one of Poland’s largest insurers, to oversee its auto repair network. Warta will be using Tractable’s AI to visually check how 100% of its auto claims from its network of bodyshops across Poland are repaired 📰 Tractable
Acheel becomes the latest full-stack Insurtech in France after obtaining regulatory approval. Following Alan and Seyna, Acheel becomes the latest Insurtech to obtain its licence to serve as full-stack carrier. Acheel should offer home, pet and individual supplementary health insurance 📰 Argus de l’Assurance (in French!)
Home 🏡 insurance news
Two relatively bad news to share from Lemonade this week:
First, Lemonade slightly missed its quarterly revenues/earnings targets and got punished on the stockmarket. It got penalized by February’s winter storm in Texas. Its first-quarter net loss was $49 million, or 81 cents a share. Wall Street analysts had expected a net loss of 78 cents a share. Total revenue of $23.5 million topped expectations for $21.9 million. Quarterly earnings 📰 Barron’s
Second, Muddy Waters Research, an activist short-seller, claimed in an open and public letter that Lemonade leaked customer data on its website. The security flaw could affect customers that joined Lemonade since July 2020, and could give access to private customer data to crawlers. 📰 Reinsurance News
Luko, the French home Insurtech, will start its internationalization by launching in Spain as early as 2021. Luko plans to launch in a second European country before the end of 2021.
Plunk, a Seattle-based startup that helps homeowners make decisions to increase their home’s value, raises $6.5 million. The process starts by giving homeowners a real-time valuation of their home, to later have Plunk suggest remodeling projects that will have the most impact on the home value. If owners decide to go with the remodeling suggestions, they can apply for a loan and get connected with a contractor through the platform 📰 Coverager