Continuity has raised €5 million in Seed funding from Elaia Partners, Bpifrance and Kamet Ventures announced the startup this week. The start-up is developing a SaaS solution based on artificial intelligence and open data to help insurers of professionals, VSEs and SMEs make faster decisions when applying for or renewing insurance policies.
European incubator Kamet Ventures created Continuity’s SaaS (“Software as a Service”) platform in 2019, which uses open data and AI to detect obsolete or invalid insurance contracts across four insurance product lines: professional multi-risk, professional liability, construction and corporate officers’ liability.
This is a necessary task, as 10 to 15% of policies do not match the risk profile of an SME, often due to tacit renewals or inaccurate initial underwriting statements. According to the McKinsey study, good commercial underwriting is crucial to the performance of insurers in the property and casualty insurance market, and requires a stronger individual approach from the adjuster.
Therefore, this round of funding will allow Continuity to develop an AI-based underwriting solution to help insurers answer two questions: can we insure this business or not, and does the policy need to be updated?
By helping insurers meet the high demand from SMEs for quick decision-making and tracking over time of their insurance coverage, Continuity will gain a foothold in the €700+ billion global market, a market that has remained largely unchanged for the past three decades.
Benoit Pastorelli, founder and CEO of Continuity, explains:
“When we started looking at how property and casualty (F&C) insurance was underwritten, we were surprised by the tools available to underwriters – which are outdated and limited. We encountered multiple systems with unnecessary layers of complexity and very limited opportunities to improve or speed up processes.”
The start-up had to develop algorithms for identification, geocoding and data reconciliation. As a result, Continuity can provide insurers with a complete view of the thousands of small and medium-sized businesses they insure, giving access to over 100 risk data points for each. More than 500,000 policies worth over €1.5 billion in premiums have been processed by the AssurTech to date, generating several million euros in additional premiums for its insurer partners and avoiding large claims through early risk identification.
Sébastien Lefebvre, Venture Partner at Elaia said:
“We believe Continuity is addressing a tremendous opportunity to become the cornerstone of the underwriting process for insurers. Their AI platform provides both responsiveness and accuracy to insurers, and is already being used by established players to better qualify the risk profiles and premium levels of their policyholders. We are very excited about the impact Continuity can have on insurers’ performance, and the digital transformation of their key processes. We are proud to be working with such an ambitious team, who have a strong vision and remarkable experience as former entrepreneurs and consultants.”
Continuity is based in Paris and consists of a team of experts in insurance, technology and data science. Its clients include several leaders in the insurance market, including AXA France, Hiscox France and MMA.
With this fundraising, 30 people will be recruited within Continuity, which also wishes to extend its portfolio scanning solution to new product lines, in particular to the agricultural and automobile sectors, and to propose a new offer for specialist brokers and underwriting agencies in order to facilitate underwriting delegation.
Clarisse Blandin, Investment Director at Bpifrance, adds:
“We are very pleased to accompany Continuity on this new stage of development: an ambitious team composed of rare AI skills, positioned on the very deep market of data in the B2B insurance sector. This market is about to be disrupted in Europe, as it is in the US, and we believe Continuity is ideally positioned and has the execution capability to lead in it.”
Benoit Pastorelli, Founder and CEO of Continuity, concludes:
“We built Continuity knowing that AI could play a transformative role in helping insurers make better underwriting decisions faster. We are delighted to have the support of Elaia and Bpifrance, two of the most knowledgeable and experienced investors in our sector, and we look forward to continuing to evolve our offering to transform underwriting processes around the world.”
Translated from Continuity annonce une levée de fonds de 5 millions d’euros auprès d’Elaia Partners, Bpifrance et Kamet Ventures
