Insurtech Goes to Niche • TechCrunch

Welcome to The Interchange! If you receive this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and for your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up over here So you can receive it directly in the future. Each week, I’ll take a look at the most important fintech news of the past week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to analysis of a specific space to hot offers on a particular company or phenomenon. There is a lot of fintech news, and it’s my duty to stay informed – and understand – so you can stay informed. – Mary Ann

Last week, I wrote four companies that have an insurance technology angle. One thing they all have in common? Each of them had a highly specialized focus.

This is noteworthy if you consider the fact that many general insurance technology companies have struggled over the past year. As my colleague Alex Wilhelm pointed out on Friday’s Equity podcast: The root has lost zero value, and the Metromile has been incorporated into the lemonade, which has lost most of its value. This led him, Natasha Mascarenas, and I to ask: As new broad-based consumer insurance providers fail to generate value, will niche players do better?

While we don’t know the answer to this question, we an act I know that investors seem to be looking for players who specialize in insurance technology.

On September 19, I mentioned how Unlimited Racer And the CoverTree All of them raised millions of dollars to provide insurance for highly specialized products. Boundless Rider was created specifically to serve riders of motorcycles, e-bikes and ATVs. In particular, the company sees huge potential in the e-bike market, which is expected to increase in the coming years. CoverTree’s sole focus is on residents of prefabricated or manufactured homes.

“If it’s built in a factory — and that includes modular homes, tiny homes, and ADUs — we help secure it,” former LinkedIn product manager Adarsh ​​Rachmale told me in an interview. “And because we’re so focused, we do it better.”

Then, in the middle of the week, I got covered pie insurance Huge $315 million increase from Series D. As I tweeted in 2021, the scale of this tour isn’t eye-catching. But in today’s environment, where investors are holding back and project financing has slowed dramatically, a $315 million increase stands out. This company also has a very specialized focus: providing workers compensation insurance to small businesses. The Washington, D.C. company told me that in the first four months of 2022, the annual operating rate (ARR) premium increased to nearly $300 million. It also doubled its total written premiums in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021.

And last but not least, I wrote about how engineer Mark Shaw — who co-founded activity-tracking and fitness app Strava and insurance software company Goodwire — raised $15 million for his latest project: Tends. Shaw’s third startup is lending against entire life insurance policies, with the goal of digitizing the “many of the traditional, time-consuming processes” involved in the process.

“There is a trillion dollars of monetary value in a lifetime in the United States alone,” co-founder Josh Weiss told TechCrunch. “We want to take advantage of this huge opportunity.”

The current lifetime lending market today for $1.1 trillion is $150 billion, and that is Enclind’s initial focus. Fabulous. Who knows??

Weekly news

Seen on TechCrunch

Connie Louisos stated that “Klarnathe 17-year-old company in Stockholm, Sweden, Buy Now, Pay Later “told employees on Monday in a video message from COO Camilla Jesicki that it was reducing staff again” to reflect its “new and ‘more focused’ nature.” About 500 Klarna employees “to watch Giesecke deliver news, including information technology and employment, although Klarna tells us in a separate statement that the job cuts will affect fewer than 100 employees globally.”

From Carly Page: “Fintech startup Revolution It confirmed that it had been subjected to a highly targeted cyber attack that allowed hackers to access the personal details of tens of thousands of customers. Revolut spokesperson Michael Bodansky told TechCrunch that “an unauthorized third party gained access to the details of a small percentage (0.16%) of our customers for a short period of time.” Revolut discovered the malicious access late on 9/11 and isolated the attack the next morning.”

Manish Singh wrote: “In just six years, UPI It has become the most common way Indians transact online. The mobile electronic payment system was used in more than 6.57 billion transactions in the world’s second largest internet market last month. Now, it is taking steps to further its growth … The central bank is expanding the UPI to “several countries in Asia, the Middle East and other parts of the world,” and is creating an international subsidiary. “

Viewed on TechCrunch +

From Anna Heim: “In 2021, we wondered if Brazil could participate in an IPO. It didn’t: Not only is Latin America’s largest economy going through the same IPO drought as the rest of the world, but also one of the most well-known IPOs in the world. , nubankIt’s coming to an abrupt end.”

From Alex Wilhelm: “In the late 2020s and 2021s, companies offering consumer savings, investment and product trading were a worry. Coinbase, Robinhood, M1 and others grew fast; hell, startups were born and scaled.” else Companies have the ability to offer services like stock trading to their platforms! We all know what happened next: 2022 brought a change in market conditions and a waning consumer interest — or perhaps the ability — to save, invest and trade. This led Coinbase to choose a popular entity in the consumer fintech market, which quickly fluctuated from staggering profits to massive losses in the span of a few quarters. Robinhood has seen a sharp drop in its market value, and M1 theater staff. For a quick check on consumer fintech activity ahead of third-quarter data, head here.

For a more in-depth look at the state of EGet advertised wages The space, how it should be classified and where the money goes, Karan Bhasin spoke to a few of the active investors in the space. Read more here.

and in other places

From Engadget: “You no longer need to live in the US to use it Confirms’s Buy Now & Pay Later services for most online shopping. Affirm is expanding into Canada through a partnership with Amazon. Spend $50 or more on Amazon.ca and you can choose Affirm’s additional payment option at checkout to split the bill into monthly payments. As in the US, there are no late fees or surprise fees. Payment option will be available within a month. The Canadian rollout comes nearly two years after Affirm purchased the domestic equivalent of PayBright – an effective rebranding. Affirm also serves Australia, but only for people who buy peloton exercise equipment.”

From Robinhood’s Blog: “Today we are introducing a new Robinhood Gold feature that enables members to earn 3% interest on brokerage funds – an increase from 1.5% for non-gold members. With the new interest rate, Gold clients can now earn more income on their uninvested money while planning their move. The next advantage is 23 times more interest than the average national savings rate. The added benefit comes on the heels of the Fed’s rate hike earlier this week.”

HR startup ripple It announced last week that it is branching out into fintech by entering the increasingly crowded spending management space. In a blog post, Rishabh Hegde, Product Lead, announced the launch of the company’s new offering, which includes corporate cards, expense management, and bill payments. The company relies on the fact that because Rippling’s spending management product is linked to the company’s HR system and employee data, it gives the company a way to “view and manage” all of its monthly cash burns “in one place.”

From PYMNTS: “The Ultimate Corporate Financial App Flex piece Now offering B2B merchants a Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) solution called Flexbase Pay. With this product, merchants can get paid instantly while giving their trading customers the option to get 60 days of interest-free financing… In practice, merchants just need to add the “Pay in 60 days with Flexbase” button to their payment process To enable the Flexbase Pay option, Flexbase then handles the subscription and provides funding to merchant customers within five minutes.”

The information indicates that whileribbon Founders John and Patrick Collison noted that the payments software pioneer, whose latest fundraising was valued at $95 billion, is in no hurry to publicly announce … A new listing could solve a looming problem for the 13-year-old startup : Granting stock to some of its first employees facing a deadline next year… If those original Stripe employees exercised the options before they expire, they’d need to provide cash to pay a hefty tax bill based on the private value of Stripe shares. Stripe could arrange another secondary offer to purchase private equity for these loyal employees, money that employees can then use on their tax bills. Instead, an initial public offering or direct listing would allow employees — as well as Stripe investors — to benefit.”

Jeff Bezos backed chypre casha cross-border payments app used by more than 5 million people across Africa and the diaspora, has announced a partnership with the card issuance platform. Highnote. The companies said in a press release that the new service will give US-based Chipper Cash customers a way “to access their digital wallets to make transactions in the US and abroad that require card payment, such as e-commerce purchases.”

stashwhich has built an investment and banking app with more than 2 million customers and about $3 billion in assets under management, says it has launched a new product called Stash Core, which it describes as a “new proprietary infrastructure platform that powers service for Americans who bank like investors.” “.

Image credits: Richard Drury (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions

Africa

Ghana’s SecondStax Fintech allows investors to access capital markets outside their countries, raising $1.6 million

Asia

Singapore’s Arbor Ventures is valued at $193M towards its upcoming early stage Fintech Fund

Zopper raises $75 million to solve India’s insurance problem

Europe

Sequence Requests Up To $19 Million Led By A16z For New Approach To B2B FinTech

European digital bank Monese receives $35 million from HSBC

Latin america

HSBC, Goldman and Santander Expect $810 Million Funding for Kavak

United State

Noble comes out of stealth to help companies extend lines of credit to their customers

Fintech Portabl app raises $2.5 million to help consumers securely store financial data

Healthcare funder Scratchpay secures $35 million Series C

Remofirst raised $14.1 million to make it cheaper and easier for companies to hire remote workers globally

Sardines raise $51.5 million led by a16z to discover suspicious fintech transactions

Proptech Rook raised $4.1 million to grow its Shared Value Investing program

Real estate management startup DoorLoop raises $20 million

Image credits: Bonnie Wang / Getty Images

a little about me

Did you know that The Interchange was cited as a “recommended reading” in a recent newsletter from the Financial Times? I was touched by a mention!

I was a guest on the One Vision podcast! I spoke with Bradley Laimer of Unconventional Ventures about how I see the current fintech landscape and how I approach “the craft and responsibility of reporting on the changing face of technology.” To listen to the episode, click here.

To find out more about me, check out MuckRack Q&A, where I talk about everything from what I look for when considering promotions to some random personal facts.

Also, a point of clarification: while cryptocurrencies can be said to fall under the “fintech” umbrella, we have a team of writers (Anita Ramaswamy, Lucas Matney, and Jacquelyn Melnik) who focus more on cryptocurrencies, while I am more focused on fintech other than crypto. In other words, send your offers encrypted their way, not theirs! Oh, and TC has a crypto newsletter too! Sign up here to get a chain reaction in your inbox.

And that’s it for this week. Thank you for your support in reading and sharing this newsletter. I know there are many fintech newsletters out there, so I’m honored that you chose to read my one. Until next time… xoxoxo Mary Ann

from San Jose News Bulletin https://sjnewsbulletin.com/insurtech-goes-to-niche-techcrunch/