Insurify looks to expand into home, life; adds Kayak vet as CTO

Insurify, a digital MGA that leans heavily on automation to improve the insurance customer experience, is fueling up for an expansion strategy.

The company has announced $23 million in Series A funding, including contributions from Nationwide and MassMutual Ventures, and has hired a full-time CTO, Gene Shkolnik, late of the travel website Kayak.

Company founder Snejina Zacharia says that she is looking to scale up her team by as much as triple within the next couple years, and that Shkolnik will be hiring a team to join him.

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“He brings a lot of expertise, in building tech for a $5 billion company,” Zacharia says.

The new funding and expanded team will fuel Insurify’s expansion into home, renters and life insurance comparison on its site. Zacharia says that pilots are in the works to be deployed in the next three to four months in the first two, with a beta version for life out as well.

“Our ultimate goal is to build a digital wallet that allows people to maintain all their policies” across lines, she says.

Insurify also wants to be accessible for insurance companies of all sizes, in order to support smaller companies that don’t have the budget of direct leaders in developing a digital channel, Zacharia says.

“We want to digitize the customer experience, and democratize insurance, bringing the large and regional companies to the same scale together, allowing customers to buy the best deal for insurance,” she says.

On the venture capital side, Insurify’s Series A was led by MTech Capital and Viola FinTech. Hearst Ventures also contributed. The company says that since launching in 2016, it has 125,000 policies in force.

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Insurtech Start-up funding Homeowners insurance Auto insurance Automation Digital distribution Life insurance
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