US-based Ascend, which claims to be the first modern insurance payments platform, has bagged $30m in its Series A, alongside a further $250m in a lending commitment.
The Series A investment was led by Index Ventures, with commitments coming from Distributed Ventures, NFP, HSCM Bermuda, XYZ Ventures, First Round Capital, Susa Ventures and FirstMark Capital.
It was also supported by a host of notable angel investors. Among them were Springbank Collective founding partner Courtney Leimkulher, former Instacart president Nilam Ganenthiran, Kettle Insurance co-founder Nathaniel Manning and Nova CEO and founder Misha Esipov.
The $250m lending commitment was facilitated by Hudson Structured Capital Management and will help Ascend finance insurance premium loans, both commercial and personal lines.
Ascend’s payments APIs and no-code products automate the end-to-end insurance payments process, everything from online point of sale with buy now, pay later financing to the distribution of commissions and carrier payables.
Through this, insurance brokers, MGAs and carriers can sell more policies by removing labour-intensive processes, Ascend claims.
Ascend co-CEO, and co-founder Praveen Chekuri said, “We’ve seen an enormous surge in demand over the last six months since we launched. Our payment software greatly reduces purchase friction for customers buying insurance while simultaneously reducing or eliminating traditionally labour-intensive operational processes for brokerages, MGAs, and carriers.
“With this new funding, we can meet that demand and help more customers use Ascend’s embedded payments and buy-now-pay-later offering. We’re excited to have the backing and financial support of these investors to help insurance distributors and carriers sell their products more effectively and build out the future of the insurance infrastructure”, says Chekuri.
With the close of the Series A, the company has raised a total of $39m in equity.
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