View this article online: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2021/06/09/617846.htm
Embroker, a digital broker focused on business insurance, aims to become a full-stack insurance carrier – an expansion of its strategy enabled by $100 million in new venture capital financing.
The money infusion will help fulfill a broader rethinking of how business coverage is marketed, sold and purchased, according to Embroker CEO Matt Miller.
“For Embroker to truly forge a new approach to business insurance, we need to reimagine and rebuild every part of the process,” Miller said in prepared remarks. “Even as some of the surface-level elements of insurance have become increasingly customized and digitized, the underlying legacy systems and antiquated processes endemic to this industry are needlessly complex and require a substantial overhaul.”
FTV Capital led the Series C financing, with additional investment from Hudson Structured Capital Management and Gaingels. Tola Capital, Canaan Partners, Bee Partners, Manulife Capital Ventures, and MassMutual Ventures also contributed follow-on financing.
In transitioning from a broker to a carrier, Embroker will be following in the footsteps of another California insurtech, Next Insurance. Next Insurance, which like Embroker debuted in 2016 as a digital insurance agency for small to medium-size businesses, began repositioning itself in 2018 to become a licensed insurance carrier. Next Insurance received its first license from Delaware.
Embroker’s new funding round will also enable further growth of Embroker Access, a part of the company’s platform that allows retail and wholesale brokers to offer Embroker’s digital insurance products to customers.
San Francisco-based Embroker, which launched in 2016, claims its platform offers streamlined insurance management, allowing businesses to get a unified view of their policies companywide, along with real-time claims tracking and instant certificates of insurance.
Embroker said it surpassed $20 million in gross written premium for the 2021 first quarter and claims to have achieved more than 100 percent retention.
With the new funding round, Embroker has reportedly raised $140 million to date, including $28 million in April 2019. Participants in previous rounds included Tola Capital, Canaan Partners, Bee Partners, Manulife Capital Ventures, Nyca Partners and XL Innovate.