Travelers acquires stake in Zensurance
Travelers, a property/casualty insurer based in the US, has announced its acquisition of a majority stake in Canadian fintech startup Zensurance. The insurer will acquire around 60 per cent of the startup in a deal worth approximately US$12.2 million.
Zensurance, since raising $1 million in seed funding two years ago, has signed over 2,500 businesses, including 40 insurers. Following the acquisition, its CEO and CTO will retain ownership of just over one-third of the company; they hope that working with Travelers will grant it more insight into the workings of the insurance industry, allowing Zensurance to pursue more complex and relevant partnerships.
“It’s not Travelers’ proprietary data that we would get access to, but just their expertise and experts that can help us look at the data that we have and maybe data that we can buy from outside,” Zensurance CEO Danish Yusuf said to BetaKit. “One of the big things for us is, like in most fintechs, the backend is really, really messy and insurance companies move extremely slowly, so when we have the opportunity to work with an insurance company that would open the door for us, it’s quite exciting … particularly [because] Travelers is one of the largest insurance companies in the US and they have a global presence.”