Kin Insurance, a US-based online home insurance provider, raised $82m in series D funding from a group of investors, featuring insurance provider CSAA Insurance Group’s corporate venturing unit, Avanta Ventures. The transaction represented the first tranche of the series D round, which was led by QED Investors. Also participating in the round were Commerce Ventures, Flourish Ventures, Hudson Structured Capital Management (HSCM), Alpha Edison, Allegis NL Capital, August Capital, Geodesic Capital and Proof.VC. The company also said it had already received $18m in commitments for the round’s second close.
Founded in 2016, Kin is an insurer which offers home insurance through a direct-to-consumer model, employing big data to take different risk profiles into account, providing more precise coverage while cutting out intermediaries. The company intends to use the funding to grow its team and product range while entering new US states.
Kin is part of the wider insurtech space, which has not remained outside the radar of corporate venture investors, as the chart below leveraging GCV’s data illustrates. The number of corporate-backed rounds in this space has remained relatively stable in recent years, since 2018 onward. The total estimated capital in those rounds during 2021 stood at $4.43bn, effectively double what it had been in previous years, which suggested heightened interest and upward pressure in valuations. With climate change increasingly causing adverse weather, there are more insurance startups catering to homes at higher risk due to their location in places prone to wildfires, floods or other natural calamities, making use of artificial intelligence and big data.
