Kin Insurance, a US online home insurance startup, has raised $13m in a funding round led by August Capital.
The round brings the company’s fundraising total to $17m, having rpevioulsy raised $4m from the likes of Commerce Ventures, Omidyar Network, 500 Startups, Chicago Ventures, and Portag3 Ventures.
Since its official launch in 2017, Kin has provided home insurance in Florida and Texas, but plans to make its offerings available nationally by the year’s end. The round of financing will help the company launch new products over the next two quarters.
With buying home insurance resulting in long applications, complex policies, limited offerings, and time lost on the phone with a local broker, Kin provides an all-online process that prioritises simplicity, affordability, and convenience.
Homeowners can get a quote in seconds with just their address, and Kin can insure homes in riskier regions that are often overlooked by big insurance companies.
“Owning a home is challenging enough. We think insuring it should be easy,” Kin CEO Sean Harper said. “Some home insurance applications are so complicated you’d have to be a home inspector to accurately fill them out. So we rely on data to tell us what we need to know about the home. It saves the homeowner legwork and lets us offer the right coverage at a good price. That’s the kind of change we want to bring to the national level.”
As part of the funding, Caribou Honig, chairman and cofounder of the InsureTech Connect conference and a founding partner of venture capital firm QED Investors, has joined the company’s board. The InsurTech veteran Honig brings years of insurance and data-driven marketing experience and will help guide key decisions as Kin expands its reach.
Honig added: “The insurance industry is long overdue for change. It’s exciting to work with a company that can see beyond the status quo. Instead of slightly improving the product, Kin aims to reinvent home insurance.”
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