Nationwide Invests in Startup Focused on Streamlining Certificate of Insurance Issuance

June 9, 2021

Nationwide invested in an early-stage funding round for Certificial, an InsurTech with a platform focused on the real-time certificate of insurance issuance and compliance management.

Certificial’s $5.8 million Series A funding round also included lead investor IA Capital, a New York-based private investment firm specializing in InsurTech and Fintech. Cofounders Capital, Fin VC and Cameron Ventures also participated. The round was oversubscribed.

Peter Teresi, a former ACORD CTO, is Certificial’s co-founder and CEO. He said in prepared remarks that the new investors “each bring their own unique value and ability to accelerate growth.”

ACORD is an industry nonprofit that publishes standardized forms and also catalogs electronic data standards.

Along with the funding, Certificial has also launched a partnership with the Property and Casualty Insurance Business of EXL, an operations management an analytics company. The focus: to provide additional automation for all stakeholders

Certificial uses real-time data to simplify the supplier management and certificate issuance processes by providing businesses with dynamic ACORD certificates of insurance. It enables an improved process in this area for agents and brokers, the insured, and the requestor.

Real-time compliance alerts increase transparency of coverage information, can help curtail the risk of fraud, misinformation, inadequate coverage, and lapses or reductions in coverage, and can be used to trigger actions that eliminate uninsured activity, such as turning off building access to an un- or under-insured supplier, the company said.

Certificial claims it added more than 6,000 new agencies and brokers to its platform in the 2021 first quarter. As well, it said the platform supports “tens of thousands of corporate users” including a number of unnamed U.S. companies in various industries.

Source: Certificial