Cytora, a UK-based insurance technology developer backed by insurance provider QBE and financial services group Starr Companies, raised £25m ($32.6m) today in a series B round led by venture capital firm EQT Ventures.
The round included Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), the patient capital fund affiliated with University of Cambridge, as well as Parkwalk Advisors, the fund management subsidiary of commercialisation firm IP Group, and assorted angel investors.
Founded in 2014, Cytora has built a commercial insurance underwriting platform that relies on artificial intelligence technology to determine risks based on public data such as property construction features and local weather, and proprietary data held by insurance providers.
The platform facilitates programmatic underwriting, reducing the process from a seven-day workflow to a 30-second mechanism. It is aimed at underwriters dealing with premiums of more than $650,000 and enterprise clients purchasing insurance products directly with average premiums of $1,300 to $6,500.
The series B round will allow Cytora, a spinout of University of Cambridge, to expand its offering and move into additional markets. QBE and Starr Companies had joined CIC to invest $5.9m in Cytora in late 2017.
The company had already received $3.2m in a January 2017 round led by Parkwalk Advisors, with participation from text processing technology developer iLexIR, technology transfer office Cambridge Enterprise and a range of angel investors.
Cambridge Enterprise had led a 2015 round of undisclosed size for Cytora that also featured Parkwalk and assorted private investors, after Accelerate Cambridge, an accelerator run by the university’s Judge Business School, had supplied some $23,000 in 2013.
The original version of this article appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing.
