Sure, Insurance Infrastructure Startup, Raises $100m in Series C to Expand Services

Sure, an insurance infrastructure startup, announced on Tuesday it has raised $100 million in Series C funding that puts its valuation at $550 million.

The funding was co-led by New York-based Declaration Partners and European growth investor Kinnevik, with participation from WndrCo and existing backers W. R. Berkley and Menlo Ventures. The round brings the Santa Monica-based startup’s total raised to $123.1 million since its 2015 inception, TechCrunch reports.

Sure has been pioneering digital insurance since the past five years, the new financing indicates that idea is widely being embraced.

Per TechCrunch, the company launched its first (enterprise SaaS) product in early 2016, and has since expanded its customer-base to include both traditional financial services and fintech companies. Customers include Farmers Insurance, Chubb, Intuit, Betterment, Revolut, Carvana, several automotive manufacturers and a leading global credit card network. All offer insurance programs built on Sure’s infrastructure.

In a conversation with TechCrunch, Sure’s CEO and cofounder Wayne Slavin explained how far the company has come, and what it intends to achieve using the newly raised fund.

While Sure would not disclose hard revenue figures, it does claim to have been profitable since 2019. Slavin says its annual recurring revenue (ARR) has grown “by more than 3X every year over the past several years.”

In a nutshell, Sure says it has created technology infrastructure that modernizes the entire insurance process and “allows it to be embedded into consumer experiences.” In other words, using Sure’s infrastructure, companies can sell insurance directly to consumers “in a matter of milliseconds,” the company claims, through an entirely digital experience that does not involve paper or humans.

The company is at the “forefront” of embedded insurance, according to Slavin.

That embedded insurance, he said, is “insurance that is integrated into the brand’s existing digital products across all industries,” he said.

“This can range from car insurance included in the online purchase of a new electric car or buying a used car on Carvana to purchasing business insurance when you start your company’s new bank account,” Slavin added.

The benefits of using its APIs allow companies to go to market with new insurance product offerings faster, simpler and cheaper compared to other methods, Slavin says.

“Sure differentiates in the three pillars that matter to our customers: tried and tested technology infrastructure, fastest speed to market and the ability to offer fully embedded customer experiences,” Slavin told TechCrunch. “Like any legacy industry being disrupted there are many players trying to ride the wave of ‘embedded’ by rebranding their 1.0 experiences with a fancy new name. True embedded insurance experiences are unique and pioneered by Sure because they’re built from the ground up to fulfill an end-to-end transaction in the embedded channel.”

The company plans to use its new capital from its growth round to accelerate its global expansion, speed up new product launches and continue to “streamline embedded insurance customer experiences.”

International expansion will come in the form of new customers — and offices — in Europe, Latin America and Asia, as well as existing customers with successful domestic programs that plan to expand their insurance solutions to international customers, according to Slavin.

Alas, by omitting Africa in its target territories of expansion, Sure misses a huge opportunity of partnership for traditional insurance companies across countries in the continent.

In the age of fintech boom, the African insurance sector has been dragging its feet, walking shyly as the world of payments undergoes bountiful digital transformation – especially in countries like Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

The untapped insurance market in the region presents an irresistible growth opportunity that the digital company needs only partnership with conventional insurance brokers to tap.

For instance, Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, has only 0.5 percent insurance penetration. The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics reported that the insurance sector recorded a negative 15.3 percent growth in 2020. The slow growth of the sector has been attributed largely to apathy, which is fueled by insurance policies considered un-enticing to potential customers.

While there has been an uptick in the number of players using the digital evolution to change the narrative in the African insurance sector, there is still a wide vacuum to be filled. And partnership with existing digital-based insurance services will provide a shortcut for traditional companies yet to get on board the fintech market. It will also provide immense growth opportunities for digital insurance service providers.