Re, a blockchain-powered reinsurer, has raised $14m in seed funding to build a decentralised global reinsurance market.
The round saw participation from Tribe Capital, Defy, Exor, Stratos, Framework, Morgan Creek Digital, SiriusPoint and a number of prominent angel investors.
Re is a fully collateralized reinsurer subject to regulatory oversight and approval that connects alternative capital providers to a nearly $1trn reinsurance market, providing investor access to an otherwise opaque asset class.
The Re protocol is a web3 application that drives a level of transparency around capital position and performance that is unrivalled by traditional reinsurers to the benefit of partners, investors and regulators.
Re already backs thousands of drivers in Texas and California. The company said in the coming weeks it will be backing thousands of small businesses across the US. In the past few months, Re has assessed more than $300m in potential premium from insurance programmes.
Re said the funding will allow it to build out its reinsurance underwriting pipeline.
Karn Saroya, CEO of Re, said, “The benefits Re brings to the market are multi-faceted: We’re building a decentralised global insurance transaction layer that settles any kind of insurance risk, in a way that’s transparent to regulators, partners and investors; administrative overhead will be lower and cost savings will inure to the benefit of insurance companies and policyholders; and finally for Members who provide capital, they earn uncorrelated yields that are comparable to high yield fixed income.”
Arjun Sethi, co-founder and partner at Tribe Capital, which incubated Re under its Tribe Crypto Labs umbrella, added, “The opportunity set for a decentralized approach to reinsurance is immense – there’s nearly a trillion of existing insurance surplus to be tokenized, and a huge amount of capital on the sidelines that will start to earn (re)insurance premiums in the near future. Re is ideally positioned to capture the growth in this new marketplace that is unlocked through blockchain technology.”
Earlier this year, Howden Group Holdings, an international insurance group, acquired TigerRisk Partners, a risk, capital, and strategic advisor to the global insurance and reinsurance industry.
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