- Kin Insurance — an insurance technology company that makes home insurance easy and more affordable — announced it has raised $35 million in Series B funding. These are the details.
Kin Insurance — an insurance technology company that makes home insurance easy and more affordable — announced it has raised $35 million in Series B funding. This round of funding was led by Commerce Ventures with participation from Hudson Structured Capital Management Ltd. (doing its reinsurance business as HSCM Bermuda), Flourish Ventures, QED, Alpha Edison, Allegis NL Capital, Avanta Ventures (the venture arm of CSAA Insurance Group), August Capital, the University of Chicago via its Startup Investment Program, and several others.
Including this round of funding, Kin has raised a total of $86 million. And the investment comes less than a year after Kin received regulatory approval for the Kin Interinsurance Network (KIN), its reciprocal exchange – a form of an insurance company that shares underwriting profits with customers. With this round of funding, the company plans to bring its solution (piloted in Florida) to homeowners across the U.S., starting with states most affected by severe weather.
While legacy insurers rely on outdated and inflexible technology, Kin’s proprietary platform allows the company to develop and launch new products in as little as a week, price risks in real-time, and ingest more data than competitors. And Kin’s technology also reduces general and administrative expenses, which constitute roughly 15% of premiums at legacy homeowner’s insurance companies.
Kin also differs from other legacy companies by selling its products directly to consumers rather than through outside agents. And traditional insurers spend about 17% of premiums paying outside agents and maintaining the infrastructure to support them. By selling directly to consumers, Kin eliminates those costs.
By structuring as a reciprocal exchange, Kin aligned interests with policyholders. And since policyholders actually own the exchange, they benefit when claims are low and have a voice in what the company does.
KEY QUOTES:
“We believe in creating meaningful change for homeowners who need our solution the most. Since we established our carrier last summer, we have been able to innovate much faster because we depend less on legacy insurance infrastructure.”
– Kin’s CEO and co-founder Sean Harper
“As early investors in Kin, we’re excited to see how fast the company has grown from startup into a market-leader for directly marketed homeowner’s insurance. While many insurers spend much of their gross margin paying third-party agents, Kin has eliminated those costs, thus making the experience both simpler and more affordable for customers.”
– Dan Rosen, founder of Commerce Ventures
“We are excited to increase our investment in Kin and to continue to support the company’s mission to provide simple and affordable insurance coverage to homeowners. Kin’s leadership team has done a commendable job of transferring structural efficiency gains to its customers in the form of more affordable coverage, and we are thrilled to support Kin’s efforts as the business enters its next phase of growth.”
– Andrew Sagon, Vice President with HSCM Bermuda
“Avanta Ventures, the venture capital arm of CSAA Insurance Group, is excited to invest and partner with Kin Insurance that is successfully leveraging technology, data, and analytics to better understand risk and underwriting for homeowners insurance to benefit members.”
– Sanjiv Parikh, managing partner at Avanta Ventures
“Kin is the insurance company that all the incumbents want to be. With a relentless focus on customer needs and outstanding business execution, the A-rated company now offers the lowest-cost, most customizable products on the market and boasts an impressive NPS of 84, which is about double the industry average. If its success in the Florida homeowners market is an indication of what’s to come, Kin is well-positioned to become the next great national insurance firm.”
– Emmalyn Shaw, Managing Partner of Flourish Ventures
