The Cambridge-based Insurtech also has hired former SVP of Engineering at KAYAK, Gene Shkolnik, as its CTO
Cambridge-based Insurify has secured $23 million in Series A funding to help drive its expansion into home, renters, and life insurance comparison. The company launched various pilot programs into these areas earlier this year, and will now use the funds to officially expands into these areas. This latest funding round was led by MTech Capital and Viola FinTech, with participation from Nationwide, Hearst Ventures, and MassMutual Ventures.
“Across different products and markets, price comparison sites have empowered consumers by driving price transparency and significant cost savings. We believe the distribution of auto insurance in the US is at an inflection point as consumers are increasingly purchasing it online, and that Insurify is positioned to be the industry leader that helps buyers find savings. Snejina is a talented leader who has built an outstanding team. MTech Capital is very excited to become a shareholder,” said Kevin McLoughlin, Partner and Co-founder of MTech Capital.
“Founded only 2 years ago, Insurify marks our 4th investment in the insurtech space, which we’re very bullish about,” added Prof. Daniel Tsiddon, Founder and General Partner at Viola Fintech. “We believe the insurance space is still suffering from high inefficiency and low penetration of automation and that Insurify’s solution provides a massive opportunity to make insurance purchasing simple, seamless, and cost effective for the consumer. With the founding team’s superior execution skills and with the new funding coupled with our global LP base of leading insurance companies, they are on the right track to fulfill their vision of disrupting the insurance space.”
Using AI to help consumers compare the best insurance
Originally launched as an online insurance agent, Insurify has evolved over the past couple of years into an AI-powered insurance comparison platform licensed and oeprating in all 50 states.
With an easy-to-use and intutive interface the company is now focused on making it easy for people to compare premiums and companies. According to the company, it has consistently doubled revenue “year-over-year” since launching, calculating that it has helped close approximately 125,000 policies worth more than $10B in insurance coverage. By eliminating marketing and agency costs, the platform says it is empowering insurers, both large and small, by helping them gain access to new customers. Interesting, Insurify notes that it is often the smaller regional insurers that have obtained the highest customer satisfaction scores on its website.
Insurify is envisioning 2020 as a pivotal year for its platform
After learning about this latest funding round, Agency Checklists reached out to co-founder Snejina Zacharia to find out how the company has evolved since our 2016 profile. Here is what she had to say:
“We have continued to be true to our vision to transform insurance shopping and help consumers make the best choice about their insurance by giving them smart recommendations. We have significantly expanded the direct integrations with carriers and now over 67% of our users buy policies online. We have bound over $130M in policy premium. We continue to believe that agents are an important part of the ecosystem and we are helping them compete with the largest brands. Our goal is to transform the insurance distribution by building a massive fully integrated virtual insurance platform like Amazon did for e-commerce.”
With this in mind, she says that she sees huge opportunity for Insurify in 2020. “The market is huge: we have the opportunity to expand across multiple different personal insurance products and replicate the product we built for car insurance comparison. We are also building deeper capability to enhance user experience and provide users with ability to self service their policy and renew through our platform.”
Insurify was actually the first “insurtech” that Agency Checklists profiled on our site, in March of 2016. For those interested in re-visiting that profile, it can be accessed here: A Q&A With Cambridge Start-Up Insurify- The Site Aiming To Be The Virtual Insurance Agent Of The Internet.
