The deal will double the size of Next Insurance’s business
Insurtech Next Insurance is making moves in Massachusetts. The company which focuses on small business insurance has announced its purchase of AP Intego. AP Intego was founded by Steve Hauck and Eric Harnden after the sale of their first endeavour, AgencyPort. Founded by the duo in 2000, AgencyPort, was sold to DuckCreek Technologies in 2016. Both companies note that the close of the transaction is subject to the customary closing conditions.
Based in Waltham, AP Intego acts as an affinity small business insurance agency offering embedded insurance to its clients core products. The company, which has more than 300 affinity partners, 87,671 insurance policies, and more than $185.1 million in active premium, currently serves some of the country’s major business software ecosystems including Intuit, Gusto, Square, and Toast.
“This is a powerful combination and we are excited to become part of the Next Insurance team—a perfect match that accelerates our market leading embedded insurance offering through small business software providers,” said Steven Hauck, Co-Managing Director at AP Intego. “Adding Next Insurance to our platform enhances the overall value proposition we are delivering our partners and their customers and allows us to truly innovate within small business insurance. In order to keep up with our partners’ insatiable appetite for a superb customer experience, Next Insurance provides us digital product flexibility for the benefit of both our partners and their customers. We’re thrilled about this new chapter in our history.”
AP Intego currently employs 160 people in and around Waltham, Massachusetts, Rochester, NY and other parts of the U.S. The addition of AP Intego’s workforce will bring Next Insurance’s total number of employees to almost 600 across four major offices. Per the terms of the transaction, AP Intego will continue its partnerships with its current insurance carriers and will focus on creating the “right coverage and competitive pricing” for its current partners and small business customers.
AP Intego acquisition will allow Next to build a one-stop shop for small commercial insurance
Building on the AP Intego’s foundation of offering leading payroll software providers a digital buying experience for pay-as-you-go workers’ compensation insurance, the insurtech will allow Next Insurance to build a more streamlined insurance buying process.
“At Next Insurance, we’re modernizing a centuries-old industry to better provide small business owners with convenience, value and choice,” said Guy Goldstein, CEO and co-founder of Next Insurance. “We’re excited to welcome the AP Intego team to Next Insurance. This acquisition marks an industry-defining milestone in our efforts to build a market-leading one-stop-shop for small business insurance. The combination of AP Intego’s experience in insurance product distribution through partners and pay-as-you-go infrastructure combined with our approach to digital customized coverage, will provide more customers with seamless access to innovative insurance products.”
What Next Insurance envisions is the offering of its products on AP Intego’s platform alongside an established stable of carrier relationships. In return, Next Insurance will provide AP Intego’s partners and customers with additional coverage, pricing options and a streamlined insurance experience. Together, through AI-driven pricing, instant purchasing capabilities and always-on, pay-as-you-go service that automatically adapts to a business as it changes, Next Insurance and AP Intego will offer a modern upgrade to small business insurance.
“As an integration partner with Next Insurance and AP Intego, we appreciate the great value they bring to our small business customers,” said Olivier Bartholot, Director Product Management Online Payroll at Intuit. “Next Insurance and AP Intego have created solutions that cater to the needs of small business owners and by teaming up, they will further our strategy of delivering Intuit customers an innovative insurance buying experience, offering more choice and flexibility, within the Quickbooks platform.”
“We built Gusto’s people platform to simplify the complexities of running a business by helping them to pay, insure, onboard, and support their teams. One of the most complex and difficult tasks of running a business is identifying and setting up all the types of insurance that are needed to operate,” said Tomer London, Gusto Chief Product Officer and co-founder. “AP Intego has been a fantastic partner for providing commercial insurance to Gusto’s customers, and by combining with Next Insurance, we’ll be able to deliver more choice to businesses so it’s even easier to find and implement the right solutions based on their needs.”
Huge growth over 2020
According to the insurtech, it experienced record growth in 2020. In particular, the company raised $500 million in venture capital over the last 16 months and acquired Juniper Labs in December. AP Intego marks the first insurance distribution acquisition for the company and brings the company’s small business customer total to more than 200,000.
A few of the company’s Key Growth highlights for 2020:
- Doubled gross written premium reaching over $200 million run rate
- Next Insurance announced its $250 million Series D financing led by CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund, bringing the company’s valuation to over $2 billion and the total amount of funding raised to date to $631 million
- Hit $1M premium record in one day
- Next Insurance now serves over 130K customers (not counting new customers from AP Intego acquisition)
- Served over 94K new businesses
- Number of customers with more than one policy grew 10x
- Next Insurance doubled its partnership ecosystem, announcing a new integration with Intuit QuickBooks and added additional partners including: BlueVine, Jobber and vCITA
- In 2020, the number of independent agents distributing Next Insurance products doubled
- New written premium tripled
- Launched an enhanced agent partner portal with upgraded self-service tools, including direct access to generate certificates of insurance and an integrated appetite checker
