Finaeo Announces Oversubscribed Seed Round of $2.25 Million
Finaeo has announced an oversubscribed seed round of $2.25 million.
The Toronto-based company helps financial advisors get a leg up and succeed in a digital era. The seed round of investing was led by Impression Ventures with participation from angel investors 500 Startups, Robo Ventures and iGan.
Finaeo digitizes the administrative process all the way from prospect-to-purchase by helping advisors limit their paperwork and cut down on traditional processes. The platform is delivered as software as a service and is designed to let advisors serve their end-customers in a much more efficient way. The company’s goal is to make purchasing insurance more transparent and seamless.
“The investment enables us to pursue an opportunity to resolve a disconnect in the industry,” said Aly Dhalla, CEO and co-founder in a release. “We believe the future of insurance advisors is the hybrid ‘bionic’ advisor: blending robo-advice, AI capabilities, and the necessary human touch. Insurance advisors are here to stay, but they will need to evolve to stay relevant.”
The funds will primarily be allocated to the hiring of additional engineering talent, a necessary step in continued development of the core Finaeo platform and marketplace. The latter will be policy-oriented and link customers, brokers and insurance companies by creating an underlying “connective tissue” that will automate data flow. That automation has traditionally been a very cumbersome process involving a lot of manual supply chain work.
“This is an industry ripe for innovation.” says Christian Lassonde, founder and managing partner of Impression Ventures. “Finaeo is disrupting the insurance supply chain and digitizing the application process, thereby eventually making it more transparent and efficient to purchase Insurance.”
Lassonde will also be joining the Finaeo Board.
“With the push for employers to provide competitive hiring packages and the increased risk of health related deaths, the push for insurance distribution will likely continue to rise,” said Dhalla. “With that said, the customer experience must evolve and advisors need to adopt a technology-first approach to their business to keep up. There are approximately 1.1M financial advisors in North America. Finaeo will be the partner that will keep them competitive.”
In 2016 the total intermediary insurance layer for North America generated close to $220 billion in revenue. The total addressable market for individual insurance such as life or disability insurance or group insurance like employee benefits was close to $66 billion.
Finaeo launched in spring this year and will have its largest feature update release in October.
