In the days leading up to the Insuretech Connect conference in Las Vegas in mid-September, InsurTechs Planck, Federato, CoverTree and Bamboo were among those announcing fund raises in double-digit millions.
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Planck Closes $23M Round. Planck, an automated AI-powered data platform for commercial insurance, had the biggest amount of funding amount to announce, a $23 million round led by Vintage Investment Partners and all existing financial investors, including Team8, Greenfield, Arbor Ventures, Viola, 3L Capital, HDI and Nationwide, alongside private angel investors.
According to Planck, the latest round will help it “continue its mission of empowering commercial insurers with real-time and accurate insights.”
The $23 million brings the company’s total to $71 million, Planck said.
Recently launched solutions from Planck include a proprietary underwriting risk search engine, which unearths information that is buried or simply doesn’t appear in search results of other tools, freeing underwriters from reading endless pages of information meant for everyday consumers. “The proprietary solution returns real-time results mined from billions of public sources and unindexed government records,” the company said in an August statement. (Another feature of the search is an embedded feedback feature, allowing users to easily train the returned insights to inform their individual search engine algorithm models and ensure future results are prioritized based on the insurer’s specific needs.)
Another recent launch is Prospect Intelligence, announced in March, designed to help carriers expand into new markets, reduce customer acquisition costs and drive growth.
The financial backing will allow Planck to bolster development of additional products that complement its platform, support continued geographic expansion and allow the InsurTech to act quickly on opportunities that arise in today’s changing market, Planck said in a statement.
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Federato Announces $15M Series A Investment. Federato, an AI-based platform that provides insurers with a unified view of disparate information needed to select and price risks, announced Monday that it raised $15 million in Series A funding, led by Emergence Capital.
Emergence Capital investors also back Salesforce, Zoom, Veeva, Box and other SaaS leaders, according to the announcement, which also discloses funding participation from Caffeinated Capital, Pear and individual backers including Niranjan ‘Niji’ Sabharwal, co-founder and CEO, AgentSync, and John Raguin, co-founder and former CEO, Guidewire.
Collectively, Federato’s investors have more than $50 billion in assets under management and over $500 billion in exits, the announcement said.
Federato’s RiskOps platform for Property & Casualty and Specialty insurance “aligns portfolio strategy with underwriting action,” the company says. According to the Federato website, the platform, “designed by underwriters for underwriters,” is the product of 1,200 hours of interviews with underwriters who revealed what they needed to do their jobs better. “The RiskOps platform uses AI and machine learning to process massive amounts of data to surface dynamic feedback on appetite, winnability, strategy and goals directly within the underwriter’s workflow,” the website says.
Highlighting pressing industry challenges to address climate change, social inflation and cyber risk, the platform allows insurers to “operationalize underutilized data assets,” the company said in the funding announcement, referring to assets such as catastrophe models and cybersecurity scans. The platform surfaces real-time risk and portfolio insights by delivering information such as internal and third-party data, underwriting rules, goals and guidelines, a company representative explained.
Explained more technically, the funding announcement said, “Federato uses reinforcement learning-based AI to provide a dynamic, unified view of risk selection data, portfolio strategy, underwriting rules and goals directly within the underwriting workflow.”
Federato said the Series A funding will be used to accelerate Federato’s growth in the North American P/C and specialty insurance markets through continual improvements to its platform and the recruitment of top talent to grow its team.
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Manufactured Home Insurance MGA CoverTree Announces $10M Funding. CoverTree, the creator of a digital insurance solution for residents of manufactured homes, raised $10 million in venture funding and announced the launch of coverage for manufactured homes in Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Illinois and Tennessee.
The $10 million seed round was co-led by AV8 Ventures and Distributed Ventures, with participation from Detroit Venture Partners, Ludlow Ventures and Annox Capital.
CoverTree is a managing general agency innovating specialty personal lines of insurance with a current focus on manufactured homes. The company notes that an alternative housing boom was brought on by the pandemic, changing demographics and supply chain issues for on-site building, coupled with the existing problem of dense populations.
“InsurTechs and major carriers have historically ignored middle America, specialty insurance and manufactured homes,” said Adarsh Rachmale, co-founder and CEO of CoverTree, in a media statement. “Specialty insurance is difficult to underwrite and distribute. A specialty insurance policy often passes through multiple pairs of hands before it ends up with the consumer—who ends up overpaying and getting the worst experience.
“We believe manufactured home insurance should be easy, modern and affordable,” Rachmale said.
CoverTree Inc. is the program administrator for the CoverTree’s Manufactured Home Program, underwritten by specialty carrier Markel.
Bamboo Closes Series A Funding, Raising $16M. Bamboo Ide8 Insurance Services, LLC (Bamboo), which describes itself as a “reimagined insurance company” offering flexible and transparent insurance options through its managing general underwriter, retail agency and captive insurer, announced today the $16 million close of its Series A round on Monday.
Since launch, Bamboo has raised $75 million in financing to support organic growth in California, the build-out of a retail agency and the launch of a Bermuda-domiciled captive insurance entity.
The round was led by Eos Venture Partners, a firm with deep insurance industry expertise focused on InsurTech investing, with participation from existing investors.
Bamboo was founded in 2018 with a focus on serving the California property market with homeowners, dwelling fire and other ancillary products.
The company reports that it experienced significant growth by delivering an easy and innovative insurance experience for customers.
Bamboo incorporates proprietary underwriting models and third-party technologies in an effort to deliver good underwriting results.
In a statement about the funding, John Chu, founder and chief executive officer of Bamboo, said, “The completion of our Series A round marks an exciting inflection point for Bamboo. After successfully refining our underwriting model and distribution capabilities over the past three years in the California market, Bamboo will now embark on a product and geographic expansion plan while remaining true to our profitable underwriting philosophy.”
The company says it is committed to “simplicity, transparency and customer advocacy.”
