Insurtech Hippo secures $70m in funding

California-based insurtech firm Hippo has secured $70 million in a funding round co-led by investment firm Felicis Ventures, and homebuilder Lennar Corporation.

All major existing investors also participated in the round of funding. Hippo will utilize the funding to accelerate growth while continuing to deliver a modernized home insurance product on a national scale, according to a corporate statement.

Hippo launched in 2017, providing insurance policies with more comprehensive coverage for today’s homeowners while cutting premium costs up to 25 percent, the firm said. Since January 2018, the company grew its policy sales by 30 percent month over month and launched into 11 new states covering more than $25 billion in total property value, the company added.

"Hippo has set the bar for the future of insurance with its fully automated, proprietary policy management and proactive underwriting,” said Victoria Treyger, managing director at Felicis Ventures and member of the Hippo Board of Directors. “The company leverages thousands of data points to underwrite customers in minutes and proactively monitors and alerts homeowners when key repairs or weather protection is needed to safeguard their most important asset. Insurance is in the early stages of undergoing the dramatic transformation of customer experience and improved risk management enabled by access to real time data. We see Hippo’s current growth rate and powerful automated policy management system as the foundation to driving this transformation.”

Insurtech is anticipated to grow from 4 percent of the current insurance market to more than 10 percent by 2023, according to a recent Jupiter report, totalling more than $400 billion in premiums. Today, Hippo is accessible to more than 50 percent of the US homeowner population, and that number is anticipated to grow to more than 60 percent by the end of 2018.