CoverHound, the leading digital platform for comparing and purchasing insurance, today announced that the company raised $33.3 million in a Series C financing round led by ACE Group (NYSE: ACE), one of the world's largest multiline property and casualty insurers.
The new strategic investment from ACE comes just months after announcing the company's Series B round, bringing the funding total to over $53 million.
This C round of financing also includes CoverHound's existing investors RRE Ventures, Blumberg Capital, Core Innovation Capital, Route 66 Ventures and American Family Ventures, the venture capital arm of American Family Insurance.
As a member of the 2nd AngelPad class (Winter 2011), CoverHound now marks the 6th AngelPad company to exceed a $100MM valuation. AngelPad was recently ranked #1 by MIT's U.S. Seed Accelerator Rankings.
What's Next for CoverHound
With this new capital, CoverHound will continue to invest in talent acquisition to further enhance its digital insurance platform and to introduce new, innovative product offerings for small businesses and entrepreneurs. This is a natural progression for CoverHound, who has experienced over 168% in new customer policy growth in 2015.
- Innovative new digital products: As CoverHound insurance product offerings continue to evolve, expansion into small business and commercial insurance is an ideal growth opportunity for the company.
- New hires: CoverHound is aggressively hiring in both of its U.S. locations in San Francisco and Westlake Village, CA. Key areas for employee growth include product management, engineering, and licensed P&C insurance agents.
- Expanding insurance carrier options: After recently extending its carrier offerings to include The General, MetLife, Mapfre, Century National, and Stillwater, new insurance carriers will continue to be added to the platform to increase consumer choice.
- Expanding marketing partnerships: After successfully launching its partnership with Google Compare in March of 2015, CoverHound continues to expand this partnership into new states, and will add more high profile marketing partnerships in the months ahead to continue to reach targeted insurance shoppers.
"Since inception, we've been focused on insurance innovation through offering the fastest and smartest way to compare and purchase P&C Insurance," said Keith Moore, Chief Executive Officer of CoverHound. "This firm commitment to both the comparison shopping experience and the insurance purchasing process has proven to be a unique differentiator that our valued carriers and marketing partnerships count on as CoverHound continues to effectively scale."
CoverHound Board Addition
This Series C round welcomes the addition of James D. Robinson III, co-founder and general partner of RRE Ventures, to the CoverHound board. In this Director role, Mr. Robinson will bring his relevant experiences as former Chairman and CEO of American Express for 16 years, in addition to having served as Board Director for well-known industry leaders like Coca-Cola Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and Novell, to name a few.
"Driving innovation and leading the insurance industry forward into a digital world has never been more important," said James D. Robinson III. "The industry is ripe for change and it's a great personal pleasure to be able to play an active role at CoverHound as the company paves the way into the next generation of insurance."