Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance, a subsidiary of insurance group MS&AD, invested $350m in US-based online home insurance provider Hippo Enterprises yesterday through a strategic partnership deal.
Hippo sells property and casualty insurance through an online service and will use the funding to expand into more US states and supply additional capital to its own insurance and reinsurance companies.
The agreement will involve Mitsui Sumitomo signing a reinsurance treaty that will involve it accepting a portion of risk on Hippo’s behalf. Takashi Sato, managing partner at MS&AD corporate venturing unit MS&AD Ventures, is taking a board observer position at Hippo.
Shinichiro Funabiki, chief digitalisation officer for Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance, said: “We value the innovation that Hippo brought to the home insurance space through its advanced classification of risk.
“We look forward to learning from one another through our strategic partnership, providing high value-added products and services to customers of both companies in the US and Japan, and to continue to support Hippo, which quickly became a top insurtech in the US home insurance space and is beloved by its customers.”
The investment valued Hippo at $2bn according to Built in Austin, representing a jump from the $1.5bn post-money valuation at which it last raised money, in a $150m series E round closed four months ago that it said this week included MS&AD Ventures.
The series E round included Propel Venture Partners, the venture capital firm sponsored by financial services firm BBVA, and mass media group Comcast’s investment arm, Comcast Ventures, as well as homebuilder Lennar and home maintenance services provider Standard Industries.
Felicis Ventures, Fifth Wall, Horizons Ventures, Iconiq Capital, FinTLV, Ribbit Capital, Dragoneer, Bond, Innovius Capital, Pipeline Capital, RPM Ventures and Zeev Ventures also took part in the round, as did undisclosed hedge funds and family offices.
Bond had led the company’s $100m series D round in July 2019 at a $1bn post-money valuation, investing with Comcast Ventures, Standard Industries, Lennar, Propel Venture Partners, Felicis Ventures, Fifth Wall, Iconiq Capital, Pipeline Capital, RPM Ventures, Hillhouse Capital, Horizons Ventures, Zeev Ventures and Michael Ovitz.
Hippo had previously raised $70m in a November 2018 series C round co-led by Lennar and Felicis Ventures that included all its major existing investors, including reinsurance firm Munich Re’s VC arm, Munich Re Ventures.
Comcast Ventures co-led the company’s $25m series B round with Fifth Wall Ventures 10 months earlier, following $14m in series A funding from Propel Venture Partners, Horizons Ventures, RPM Ventures, GGV Capital and Pipeline Capital in 2016. Early Hippo investors include Abstract Ventures and Aquiline Technology Growth.
