US-based online home insurance provider Kin Insurance received $82m in series D funding on Tuesday from investors including insurance provider CSAA Insurance Group’s corporate venturing unit, Avanta Ventures.
The cash represented the first tranche of Kin’s series D round and it was led by QED Investors, while Commerce Ventures, Flourish Ventures, Hudson Structured Capital Management (HSCM), Alpha Edison, Allegis NL Capital, August Capital, Geodesic Capital and Proof.VC also invested.
Kin provides home insurance through a direct-to-consumer model that uses big data to take different risk profiles into account, providing more precise coverage while cutting out middlemen.
The company will use the funding to grow its team and product range while entering new US states. It said it has already received $18m in commitments for the round’s second close.
With climate change increasingly causing adverse weather, more insurance startups are popping up that, like Kin, cater to homes at higher risk due to their location in places that may be prone to wildfires, floods or other natural disasters, making use of artificial intelligence to serve those areas.
Kin’s round came under two months after Descartes Underwriting, which combines proprietary data technology with information sourced from a range of areas in order to offer parametric insurance to businesses at risk from climate change, received $120m in series B financing.
Kettle, the developer of a reinsurance product tailored for areas at risk from wildfires, raised $25m in a November 2021 series A round as it looks to increase the range of disasters it covers, working with a big data-equipped fire prediction model.
US-headquartered kWh, which counts energy utility Engie among its investors, utilises big data to provide insurance for solar and wind energy installations, which have been underserved by traditional insurers, and it secured $20m in series B funding last month.
The subsector has seen some M&A activity too, with flood insurance provider Neptune Flood agreeing in October 2021 to acquire earthquake insurance specialist Jumpstart.
Kin’s chief executive, Sean Harper, told TechCrunch: “There is a lot of demand for insurance [in higher-risk areas] because people are increasingly moving to those places.
“There are some places in the US where you should not live, like on a barrier island or in historic flood plains. However, if you choose to live there, insurance is expensive. Using a special sauce of the technology, we are good at understanding that a county is big, and you should not be painting every home with the same brush.”
Kin closed a series C round co-led by HSCM and Senator Investment Group at $69.2m in June 2021 with backing from Symphony Ventures, Flourish Ventures, Allegis NL Capital, Alpha Edison and University of Chicago’s Startup Investment Program.
The last four had joined Avanta Ventures, Commerce Ventures, HSCM, QED Investors and August Capital in Kin’s $35m series B round in 2020. It has now raised over $237m altogether.
Photo courtesy of Mike Newbry via Unsplash.
