🦄 Newfront raises $200 million
Newfront, “the modern insurance brokerage platform,” announced a $200 million investment at a $2.2 billion valuation led by the Growth Equity business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management and B Capital. Additional investors in the round include Founders Fund, Meritech Capital, Y Combinator, Index Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, XYZ, Susa Ventures, PruVen Capital, Propel, Vetamer, Altai, Tony Xu CEO of Doordash, and others.
Founded in 2017, the San Francisco-based company provides business insurance and employee benefits, and it also has a private client offering. Last year Newfront announced an agreement to merge with ABD Insurance and Financial Services, which offers risk management, insurance brokerage, human resources, and retirement solutions. According to the announcement, the combined company would serve over 10,000 clients and place $2+ billion in premiums annually.
“The nature of risk has changed drastically over the past century but the insurance industry has not modernized to meet these new challenges. This investment furthers Newfront’s commitment to building the modern platform for clients, insurance professionals, and trading partners.” – Spike Lipkin, Newfront Co-Founder and CEO.
“We are finding that talented brokers and insurance professionals are voting with their feet and leaving 100 year old platforms to join us in pursuit of a better client and colleague experience . There has never been a better time to join Newfront.” – Brian Hetherington, President of Newfront.
“We see modern, full-stack platforms transforming large parts of financial services, and we believe Newfront’s marriage of technology, people, and domain expertise represents the future of the insurance industry. We are proud to support Spike, Kurt, Gordon, Brian, and the entire Newfront team as they continue to scale the platform and move the industry forward.” – Paul Pate, Vice President within Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
“At B Capital, we seek to back generational companies with broad platform potential. Newfront has a unique opportunity to achieve this as the sole modern insurance and benefits broker. Fundamentally, Spike and the team understand that enterprises will always want to work with a human broker, as their needs are nuanced and policies don’t fit a template. What the industry really needs is the ‘bionic broker’ – the most talented brokers in the country powered by the best technology stack. As Newfront continues to build an important distribution channel, we believe they will have opportunities to innovate up and down the insurance stack – across product, capital, claims, and risk management.” – Matt Levinson, Partner at B Capital.
