Herndon, VA, May 13, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) today announced that CIT GAP Funds, with funds also coming from the Virginia Founders Fund, has invested in Richmond, Va.-based Fenris. Founded in 2016, Fenris is a software and analytics company focused on streamlining insurance application processing by eliminating steps for users and accelerating outputs for insurers. Fenris plans to use this investment from CIT GAP Funds to grow sales, develop its repeatable and highly scalable client acquisition and onboarding processes, and add more technical resources. In addition, Fenris has identified several unique data sets, never before applied in an insurance application scoring context, and plans to secure emerging data sources for its exclusive and perpetual use in insurance.
Every insurance interaction involves a consumer, and every consumer was once an applicant. But for many insurance companies, only a small fraction of those applicants become customers. According to Fenris’ research, each year, over three billion insurance applications are started but roughly 40 percent are abandoned, and around 20 percent contain material errors. Fenris works to optimize the experience at the point of quote to ensure completing the application is quick and easy for consumers, companies spend more time on leads that represent their target market, and the cost of acquisition is reduced.
“The point of quote is the first step in a customer's interaction with an insurance company. Their experience at the beginning of this process will affect their decision to continue on as a customer, impacting performance down the line,” said Jennifer Linton, CEO and Founder, Fenris. “If a consumer only has to spend 30 seconds taking a photo of their license, instead of 15 minutes filling out the same information in a form, they are more likely to buy; and the information is more likely to be accurate for the underwriters. We enable this kind of friction-free application process, and thanks to the support of CIT GAP Funds, Fenris will be able to expand our offering to serve more customers.”
By re-purposing large data sets used by other industries, such as financial technology, and combining them with emerging data elements from public and private sources, Fenris instantly populates an insurance application and scores applicants on multiple dimensions, including risk segment, lifetime value, and propensity to buy. Fenris applies machine learning techniques to continually improve its algorithms in use by clients, including insurance carriers, agencies, reinsurers, and intermediaries. The impact made at the first step of the insurance funnel has a trickle-down effect that positively effects the rest of the insurance life cycle.
“The typical insurance application is cumbersome and time-consuming, resulting in high cost of acquisition. Fenris’ software is already proving to be extremely efficient at addressing this issue, with clients expanding the number of products they use within weeks of launching their use of the first product,” said Thomas Weithman, Managing Director of CIT GAP Funds, and President and Chief Investment Officer of MACH37. “With a large independent agency, a top tier insurer, and mid-to-small regional carriers already in their customer portfolio, combined with being selected into highly competitive industry-specific cohorts and being named a Top 20 insurtech company by the Hartford InsurTech Hub, CIT is confident in Fenris’ future success.”
For more information about CIT, please visit https://www.cit.org/.
About Fenris
Fenris was born in 2016 out of a recognition that the insurance industry needed a better experience for customers seeking coverage quotes. With proprietary scores, data, and advanced technology, Fenris enables the ‘50 to 5’ streamlined digital quoting process while preserving underwriting integrity and accuracy. Our analytics engine appends instantly scores and appends policyholder information with additional data points to let the consumer enter less information to quickly receive a quote, and allowing the insurer to tailor marketing to a specific user and ultimately lower customer acquisition costs. For more information, please visit https://fenrisd.com/.
About CIT GAP Funds
CIT GAP Funds makes seed-stage equity investments in Virginia-based technology, clean tech and life science companies with a high potential for achieving rapid growth and generating significant economic return for entrepreneurs, co-investors and the Commonwealth of Virginia. CIT GAP Funds’ investments are overseen by the CIT GAP Funds Investment Advisory Board (IAB). This independent, third-party panel consists of leading regional entrepreneurs, angel and strategic investors, and venture capital firms such as New Enterprise Associates, Grotech Ventures, Valhalla Partners, Harbert Venture Partners HIG Ventures, Edison Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Intersouth Partners, SJF Ventures, Carilion Health Systems, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, and Alpha Natural Resources. For more information, please visit www.citgapfunds.org.
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