Boost Raises $20M for Deeper Dive Into ‘Embedded Fintech Revolution’

May 20, 2021

Boost Insurance attracted $20 million in new financing from multiple investors it will use to dive deeper into what CEO Alex Maffeo refers to as the “embedded fintech revolution.”

The New York-based InsurTech has a B2B embedded insurance platform, with plans to rapidly increase hiring in order to support growth across its InsurTech and embedded partner channels, and also expand its API platform features. Also on tap, an expected rollout in 2021 of additional insurance products through InsurTech partners and other technology industries.

“The embedded fintech revolution has finally caught up to insurance,” Maffeo said in prepared remarks. “We spent the last five years building the most comprehensive infrastructure platform in the insurance industry and that hard work is paying off. ”

Maffeo said the company, launched in 2017, has invested heavily in the compliance and capital side of its platform just as it has in its technology, a strategy that he said “attracts the world’s best InsurTechs and enterprises to us when they look for a partner.”

RRE Ventures led Boost’s Series B financing round, which also included new investors Fin VC, Gaingels, Hack VC and an unnamed “global publicly traded reinsurance company.” Existing investors Greycroft, Coatue, and Conversion Capital also participated.

To date, Boost has raised $37 million, including the new round.

The idea behind Boost’s integrated insurance-as-a-service platform is to allow innovative companies from any industry to build, embed, and manage insurance programs for their customers. Boost said companies can use it to deliver “highly configurable insurance products directly to consumers through a fully embedded experience within their own front-end environments.” Boost’s API integration puts together “the necessary operational, compliance and capital components” to make this possible, the company claims.

The company also has a managing general agency subsidiary, Boost Insurance Agency, Inc., that is licensed to produce any type of insurance in all 50 states. Boost said it is also appointed by ‘A’-rated fronting carriers and has its own dedicated reinsurance facility backed by global reinsurers.

In four years, the company has developed a number of digital distribution clients in multiple industries and stages of development. They include the InsurTechs Hippo, Aon’s CoverWallet, Cowbell Cyber and Wagmo. Other clients are in fintech, proptech and other B2B and consumer segments.

Boost claims that companies using its platform can reduce the cost of building and managing their insurance business by more than 90 percent, and that integration takes as little as two weeks. The company compares this to the 12-48 months “typically required” to build a managing general agency, asserting that its technology

“dramatically reduces the barriers to entry for both new entrants and high-growth emerging players in what has historically been a slow-moving and analog insurance industry.”

Boost places itself in the space of companies like Plaid (banking-as-a-service) and Affirm (point-of-sale financing) in terms of its insurance-as-a-service offerings in the commercial lines space, (business owners policy and startup D&O insurance), personal lines products (renters insurance, pet health insurance, and crypto wallet theft protection), and an ecommerce bundle (warranties, shipping, and package theft).

Boosts, which currently employs 30 people, said it has insured more than $5 billion of value across a wide range of property commercial and personal lines insurance products since its launch.

Source: Boost