Waterdrop, a China-based online insurance platform, has reportedly netted $230m in a new funding round.
The investment was led by Swiss Re, with contributions also coming from Tencent, IDG Capital and Wisdom Choice Global Fund, according to a report from Coverager.
Waterdrop offers three core products: mutual insurance, commercial insurance and crowdfunding for illness. Its services take place through a WeChat account to ease communications, with users able to post crowdfunding campaigns, buy insurance policies or make claims.
Its website claims to have helped 12,980 people and has distributed around CNY 1.6bn ($231.4m) in claims.
Swiss Re head of principal investment and acquisition for Asia Ning Zhou said, ?As a leading online InsurTech company, Waterdrop is well positioned to tackle the pain points of traditional insurance and pave the way for future breakthroughs in the industry, such as the accelerated technological innovation and digitalization of the industry worldwide that we have witnessed during the COVID-19 situation.p>
The InsurTech platform raised two sizeable investments in 2019. It closed its Series C on $144m in June 2019, receiving support from private equity firm Boyu Capital, Gaorong Capital, CICC Capital and Tencent.
Prior to that, the company had netted $74.2m in its Series B in April 2019. Capital came from ?Tencent, Banyan Capital, IDG Capital, BlueRun Ventures, Sinovation Ventures, DST Global founder Yuri Milner and former Tencent E-Commerce CEO Wu Xiaoguang.
China has a strong InsurTech sector, with more than $1.7bn being deployed to the sector since 2015.
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