funding round sets a record for insurtech and values wefox at $3 Billion
wefox, the Berlin-based digital insurance company has raised a record US$650 million for its SeriesC funding, resulting in a post-money valuation of US$3 billion. This round represents the largest Series C to date for an insurtech globally.
wefox intends to invest the proceeds in expanding into the US and Asia within the next two years while strengthening its presence in its existing markets in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Poland.
Target Global led the round, with participation from existing investors including OMERS Ventures, Gsquared, Merian, Horizons Ventures, Eurazeo, Mubadala, Creditease, Salesforce Ventures, Speedinvest, Alma Mundi Ventures, Victory Park Capital, GR Capital, Mountain Partners, Seedcamp, and Sound Ventures. New investors include LGT, Partners Group, Jupiter, and FinTLV.
Launched in 2015 by CEO Julian Teicke and founders Fabian Wesemann, and Dario Fazlic, wefox has been considered one of Europe’s most promising unicorns. In 2020 wefox reported a profit for its insurance business, wefox insurance, making it the first digital insurance company to reach profitability. Furthermore, wefox’s revenue increased to $143M in 2020, doubling its 2019 revenue.
Julian Teicke, wefox CEO and founder, said, “Our business has grown significantly over the past six years, and since the beginning we have consistently delivered strong year-on-year growth. This year we took several important steps, including unifying the business under one brand, expanding into Poland, and setting up a deep tech team in Paris. Within the next few years, we plan to expand our global footprint by increasing our presence in Europe and moving into both the US and Asian markets.”
wefox is a fully licensed digital insurance company that sells insurance through intermediaries and not directly to customers, which has resulted in significant growth with a clear path to profitability.
Mr. Teicke added, “This is why wefox has built a huge network of advisors across Europe. We believe that insurance is all about people, and we believe that technology is an enabler and should not replace the human connection. We have set out to improve the customer experience for both our advisors and our customers through technology to increase customer satisfaction, reduce customer acquisition costs, increase cross-selling, and decrease churn.”
wefox continues to deliver a loss ratio supported in large part by its straight-through-processing (STP) of more than 80%, and a central product factory that swiftly distributes new products to the market due to its full stack insurance technology.
Fabian Wesemann, wefox CFO and founder, said, “This investment strengthens our growth strategy and moves us closer to realising our vision – to prevent 30% of risks from happening – in order to offer the most advanced service to our customers. As part of this, we want to ensure that we are building the technology to automate our business processes to have a STP ratio consistently above 80%.”
Yaron Valler, General Partner at Target Global, said: “wefox is unique among the insurtech players with ample room for growth ahead. wefox continues to deliver exceptional results backed with demonstrable year-on-year revenue growth, which saw their insurance carrier, wefox Insurance, report a profit earlier this year, marking them out to be the first insurtech to reach profitability.”
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