Chances are you already compare clothes, hotels, airline tickets, gadgets, doodads, and knick-knacks online before you make a purchasing decision, so why not add insurance policies to the list? It’s a practice more common abroad than in the U.S. — a 2016 survey by Finaccord found that 40 percent of U.K. customers signed up for plans for the first time or switched carriers online, compared to the fewer than 5 percent of folks stateside who opted to do so — but it’s a burgeoning business. In 2017, roughly 25 percent of U.S. drivers bought car insurance on the web.
San Francisco startup CoverHound, which was founded nine years ago by industry veterans hailing from Unitrin Direct and InsWeb, has ridden the insurance digitization wave pretty successfully. It’s sold more than 200,000 policies to date and in 2016 moved into the cyber insurance sector through its subsidiary, Cyberpolicy. And it’s raising cash to fuel growth to come.
CoverHound today revealed that it has raised $58 million in a series D round led by global insurer Hiscox, with participation from Chubb, Aflac Ventures, and Japan-based MS&AD. It worked with Allen and Company on the series D, which comes on the heels of a $33.3 million series C round in September 2015 and brings Coverhound’s total raised to $112 million.
The capital will enable CoverHound to expand its offices beyond San Francisco and Westlake Village, California to Charlotte, North Carolina, CEO Keith Moore said, and sets the stage for its international expansion efforts into Japan and other markets.
"The future of digital insurance distribution will continually shift to more non-traditional insurance brands,” Moore said. “In an industry that’s been heating up with a flurry of new entrants, we feel blessed that we know exactly who we are and what we excel at."
To read the full article, head over to VentureBeat.
