Walnut, an innovative company focused on the insurance distribution industry, announced the successful close of its latest funding round at $4.6 million. This funding round was led by NAventures (National Bank of Canada’s corporate venture capital arm) with participation from TELUS Global Ventures, Diagram Ventures, Portage, and Highline Beta.
The funding will be used to expand Walnut’s groundbreaking embedded insurance technology platform for insurers, brokers, and enterprise businesses looking to participate in the future of insurance distribution. The funding, which came from some of Canada’s leading investors, represents a major milestone for Walnut as it accelerates efforts to modernize and streamline insurance distribution.
Diagram has also recently expanded its strategy beyond its well-known venture studio model to include external investments. And Walnut is among the first few of this kind in the Diagram portfolio, highlighting their confidence in the team’s potential to revolutionize the insurance landscape.
Walnut’s approach to insurance distribution utilizes sophisticated technology and strategic partnerships to create a sustainable and efficient business model. And by embedding insurance products directly into the products and platforms of enterprise businesses and financial institutions, Walnut removes significant marketing costs and drives insurance distribution through partner-driven channels.
This strategy supports a more sustainable distribution strategy for insurers and ensures that consumers receive tailored insurance products when and where they need them.
Walnut’s platform enables partners to quote and enroll customers into nearly any insurance product in real time within co-branded consumer experiences, advisor-driven processes, or headless via API. Walnut offers a flexible and efficient solution for integrating insurance into various digital ecosystems within 30-90 days, whereas typically, this can take years. This approach ensures a seamless multi-channel delivery, enhancing the customer experience and leading to effective product delivery.
For insurers and brokers, Walnut’s platform offers significant benefits like the ability to profit share versus front-loading marketing costs, improving risk management, and unlocking untapped channels. The company’s partners benefit from increased ARPU (Average Revenue Per User), deeper relationships with their customers, and reduced churn. For consumers, Walnut’s solution ensures they receive insurance at the right time with reduced effort to purchase, facilitated by data-driven processes and consolidated brand experiences.
In the current economic climate – with increasing loan defaults and financial instability – Walnut’s focus on loan and debt protection products is timely and they support many insurance products. And these products are also designed to safeguard consumers against income loss, offering support in uncertain times.
Walnut will utilize the funding to enhance its technology platform for insurers and brokers, expand its engineering team, and form new partnerships. And the company is also poised to enter new markets, capitalizing on the massive opportunity to effectively deploy replicable embedded insurance solutions.
KEY QUOTES:
“The insurance industry has yet to complete its digital transformation, with many insurers and brokers still operating in traditional, non-digital fashions. We aim to leapfrog traditional digitization and support a modern API-enabled embedded distribution strategy.”
“Our embedded insurance platform captures distribution, supports insurers and brokers with embedded-first infrastructure, and delivers products to our customers in a compliant manner. This funding allows us to expand our technology stack, scale our operations, and bring innovative insurance solutions to both insurers and businesses looking to drive new revenue streams.”
- Adrien Niblock, CPO and Co-founder of Walnut
“Walnut’s unique approach to embedded insurance distribution aligns with our vision of supporting transformative technologies that have the potential to drive significant industry change. Over the last two years, in addition to Diagram’s historical Venture Builder activities, we’ve made a number of investments in high-quality external pre-seed to Series A companies. We think this complements what we have historically been doing and we are excited to support a broader group of companies, like Walnut, with our ecosystem,” added François.
- François Lafortune, CEO of Diagram Ventures
“We are proud to support Walnut in their next phase of growth. Our ongoing investment and partnership reflect our confidence in their vision and execution.”
- James Povitz, Principal at NAventures
