Talage Raises $5M in Funding

Talage, a Reno, Nev.-based digital insurance platform, closed a $5m Series A funding.

The round was led by Merus Capital, with participation from Calibrate Ventures, WTI and Hallador Investment Advisors

The company intends to use the new funds to scale its engineering and business development teams.

Founded in 2015 by Adam Kiefer, Matt Donovan and Zachary Draper, Talage provides a SaaS based platform enables small business owners to purchase essential commercial coverage from agents online. The platform is now live across the country, having sold over $1 million in insurance coverage to businesses in over 40 states via its solution. The company’s 12 carrier partnerships allow agents to instantly sell coverage under their licenses and appointments via any digital channel.

Source, FinSMEs, February 14, 2020

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HealthCare.com Secures $18M in Series B Funding

HealthCare.com, a NYC-based provider of technology-enabled health insurance solutions, secured $18m in Series B funding.

The round, which brought the total capital raised to over $27m, was led by Second Alpha Partners, with participation from Axis Capital and CNO Financial Group.

The company intends to use the capital to fund technology, engineering and data-science investments, expand consumer experience solutions and accelerate the development and marketing of its proprietary insurance products.

Founded in 2014 by Howard Yeh, Jeff Smedsrud and Jose Vargas, HealthCare.com is an online health insurance company providing a data-driven shopping platform for American consumers to enroll in individual health insurance and Medicare plans. The company also develops and markets a portfolio of proprietary, direct-to-consumer health insurance and supplemental insurance products under the name Pivot Health.

Source. FinSMEs. November 11, 2019

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Next Insurance Raises $250M in Series C Funding

Next Insurance, a Palo Alto, CA-based digital Insurtech company focused on small business insurance, raised $250m in Series C funding.

Munich Re provided the funding in a round that brought total funding to $381m in over three years, with a valuation of over $1 billion USD.

The company intends to use the funds for new product development as it scales its small business insurance products, to accelerate its customer expansion initiatives.

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Led by Guy Goldstein, Co-Founder and CEO, Next Insurance provides digital small business insurance coverage across the US by enabling customers businesses to acquire all P&C insurance products in one place and at any time. This includes, general liability, professional liability, commercial auto and, as of today, workers’ compensation coverage.

The company provides insurance coverage to over 1,000 unique types of business with policies that are tailored to their needs.
Benefits also include the Live Certificate, a real-time certificate of insurance verification and access to an online portal where policyholders can add additional insureds, update policy or payment information, send verifiable proof of insurance, and more, all from a smartphone or computer.

Most recently, Next Insurance launched Next for Agents, a platform that enables customers to purchase Next Insurance policies through an agent.

Source. FinSMEs, September 7, 2019

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This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

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Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

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DeadHappy, the UK pay-as-you-go life insurance provider, raises £4M Series A

DeadHappy, a U.K.-based insurtech startup that wants to offer more flexible life insurance and remove the taboo surrounding death, has raised £4 million in Series A funding. Backing comes from e.ventures, alongside the company’s seed investor Octopus Ventures.

Founded in 2017, DeadHappy claims to be the U.K.’s “first fully digital pay-as-you-go life insurance provider.” It offers flexible life insurance policies that are designed to be “cheaper, easier and better” than existing traditional providers. This includes pricing insurance based on your current circumstances and the option to add (or remove) further coverage on a rolling basis.

More broadly, the startup is developing what it calls its “Deathwish” platform, which is something akin to a will. The idea is that you can specify how you wish any future insurance payout to be used, such as paying off your mortgage. And there are also plans to incorporate other wishes not related to finances.

“Our vision is to change attitudes to death and we are tackling that in a number of ways,” DeadHappy co-founder Phil Zeidler tells me. “Despite death being the one certainty humans face, it remains for many a taboo subject, and the failure to talk about it and plan for it is both counterintuitive and leads to significant further trauma at the most difficult of times for family and loved ones.”

Currently the Deathwish platform offers financially motivated Deathwishes, but the longer-term plan is to enable practical Deathwishes, such as making sure your funeral is the way you want it, and what Zeidler calls emotionally motivated Deathwishes.

The idea is to help offer a way to help loved ones “achieve something meaningful in their lives, whether that’s learning how to play the drums or funding an expedition to the Amazon,” he explains.

“Crucially, customers can share these Deathwishes as they choose, which is a practical tool to ensure their wishes are clear and understood. Our platform acts as a catalyst for opening a conversation with loved ones and a place to share recorded video messages and stories.”

Meanwhile, DeadHappy says it will use the new funding for future growth by further building the technology and capabilities of its Deathwish platform. It also plans to expand its product and partnership offerings to major financial service distributors.

Source. TechCrunch, Steve O'Hear, September 27, 2019

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This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

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Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

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