Digital motor insurer Marshmallow has raised $85m, valuing it at more than $1.25bn and making it the second British Black-founded unicorn.
The round saw participation from the company’s existing investors Passion Capital, South Africa’s Investec Bank and French reinsurer SCOR.
The digital-only insurer intends to use the proceeds to foray into foreign markets and develop a variety of insurance solutions other than motor insurance.
Founded in 2017 by twins Oliver and Alexander Kent-Braham and David Goate, the firm also plans to use the funding to hire more people as part of its expansion plan.
Marshmallow, which is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, leverages machine learning to offer bespoke insurance solutions to its customers. It underwrites its own insurance.
Commenting on the raise, Oliver said, “Customers are voting with their feet – and they clearly want a modern insurance offering. We’ve only just scratched the surface of disrupting a market worth $5 trillion globally, and there’s so much more we’re planning to do in the coming years. We look forward to building more products that help people in their time of need.”
Marshmallow has enjoyed a growth of over 100% in the last six months and has sold over 100,000 policies to date.
The latest round follows $30m Series A funding in November 2020, which valued the firm at $310m.
WorldRemit, a cross-border digital payments platform, was the first UK unicorn to be founded by people of black heritage.
In March this year, another UK-based InsurTech Zego achieved unicorn status after it raised $150m in a funding round led by DST Global.
In June, Germany-based InsurTech startup wefox raised $650m in Series C funding led by Target Global. The funding round valued the company at $3bn.
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