Insurely raises €19 million
Swedish insurance startup Insurely announced the completion of a €19 million Series A funding round led by Insight Partners with participation from Alfvén & Didrikson, Luminar Ventures, Philian, and Neptunia Invest.
Founded in 2018, Insurely claims to be Europe’s leading open insurance platform. Essentially, the startup wants to do to insurance what open banking did to banking. Several Swedish players like Avanza, ICA Försäkring, Lassie and Hedvig are already using Insurely, and “soon” Insurely’s solutions will be available in other European markets as well.
One use case is a service that intends to give consumers the option to compare their insurance products. ICA Försäkring, a Swedish insurance company established in 2015 and owned by ICA Gruppen, used Insurely’s technology to create Försäkringsutmanaren, or in English the insurance challenger. Users log in with their BankID, the largest digital verification system in Sweden owned by several Swedish and Scandinavian banks, and Insurely’s tech then scrapes for insurance information.
In the summer of 2020, several months after the service was announced, ICA Försäkring was reported to the Swedish Consumer Agency for improper marketing of insurance. The main highlight of the complaint was that the comparison service was lacking in several departments including coverage, deductibles, discounts, and claims. To make a long story short, scraping is done when you can’t get the full picture from the company that has the data. For open insurance to succeed, insurance companies will need to be willing to make data available (with user consent) in order for tech solutions to deliver value to consumers.
”We’re excited to continue our journey with new strong investors that share our vision to make the insurance industry more open and obvious. With the new funding, we plan to accelerate our expansion to strategically selected markets with the UK and France being among the first. We have seen an increased interest in our open insurance platform among European insurers and banks. With the new funding and support we are well positioned to strengthen our offering by scaling the team and adding further key competence. Given the successful growth in existing markets, we are convinced the expansion will take Insurely to the next level” – Martin Einemo, CEO and co-founder of Insurely.
“Insurely’s open insurance platform enables insurance carriers, banks, and insurtechs to integrate to a single point of access for all insurance data. There is huge potential in Insurely’s vision, and the company has already developed a number of relevant products for the market in a short amount of time. Europe’s leading open insurance platform” – Teddie Wardi, managing director at Insight Partners.
“Open insurance is an exciting area in which Insurely is an actor at the forefront. We strongly believe in how the team is running the business long-term and are really glad to be part of their journey.” – Ken Liebkind, partner at Alfvén & Didrikson.