Funding comes at an “inflection point” for the insurance industry
It’s been a busy week in the insurtech field in Boston. In addition to Corvus’ Insurance’s big announcement, another Boston-based insurtech also announced the results of its recent Series B Funding Round. Hi Marley, the creator of the “only intelligent communication platform built for the insurance industry” has raised $25 million in Series B financing. This latest funding amount follows the $8 million which the company raised back in July 2020 during its initial A1 Funding Round.
The Series B funding round was led by Emergence Capital, with Founder and General Partner Gordon Ritter taking a seat on Hi Marley’s Board. Returning investment firms in the round included Underscore, True Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and Greenspring, along with additional investors including Brewer Lane Ventures.
“Consumer’s expectations have accelerated; they demand easy, modern and transparent communications with their insurance providers,” said Mike Greene, CEO and co-founder, Hi Marley. “More so than ever, if it doesn’t meet those expectations, they simply take their business elsewhere. In response, carriers are working at an unprecedented pace to meet policyholders where they are – and we’re thrilled to help them get there faster. Our goals, which Gordon and the Emergence team are poised to help us achieve, are to continue to expand across the enterprise, with new ways to communicate while surfacing valuable insights that ultimately help insurers create more lovable experiences.”
Emergence Capital specializes in backing the next generation of industry cloud companies that are hyper-focused on specific challenges within a vertical, and Founder & General Partner Gordon Ritter said the firm has been looking for the next industry stand-out cloud insurance company for a while. “Emergence is excited to partner with Hi Marley, as we believe their people, their vision, and their timing are uniquely situated to transform the insurance industry,” Ritter said. “Mike Greene and the Hi Marley team have the strong industry knowledge we look for in portfolio companies, and their passion for making insurance lovable is contagious.” Hi Marley’s plans for the round include creating powerful new features, ensuring the platform scales across the enterprise, and adding to Hi Marley’s engineering, sales and customer success organizations, among others.
Funding comes at an “inflection point for the insurance industry
In Hi Marley’s official remarks, it noted that this latest funding round comes at an “inflection point for the insurance industry.”
Consumers already enjoyed a tremendous amount of choice in carriers, and they’ve never had more power and ease to change with just a few clicks on their phones. People are also driving less, so customers are looking for products like usage-based coverage to save money, which has squeezed the industry’s margins. The result is a ‘perfect storm’ of customer churn that in some cases has reached 40 percent.
Feedback from policyholders has put pressure on carriers to interact with customers in the channels they prefer, and integrate more of the insurance claims ecosystem, such as body shops and rental agencies, as well as offer digital communications channels for services other than just claims. As a result, the number of carriers using Hi Marley’s platform has doubled, and the company has seen a 4x increase in the user base.
