wefox raises US$650m in record insurtech funding round

The Berlin-based insurtech, wefox, has closed a record $650m Series C funding drive - the biggest for an insurtech globally.

The round, which was led by Target Global, has also resulted in a post-money valuation of $3bn. 

wefox will invest the capital in strengthening its presence in existing markets and expanding globally within the next two years.

According to reports, the round was significantly oversubscribed, with participation from existing investors OMERS Ventures, Merian, Horizon Ventures, Eurazeo, G Squared, Mountain Partners, Mubadala Capital, GR Capital, Speedinvest, Salesforce Ventures and Seedcamp.   

New investors included FinTLV, LGT and its affiliated impact investing platform Lightrock, Partners Group, EDBI, Jupiter, UBS and Decisive.

wefox profits for 2020

wefox is currently Europe’s largest insurtech. The fully licensed digital insurance company sells insurance through intermediaries and not directly to customers, which has resulted in significant growth with a clear path to profitability.

Details of the company’s 2020 financial year show the carrier made revenues of $143m and posted a profit for the first time.

This latest round means wefox has raised a total of $910m since it’s first funding drive in 2016. 

Speaking about the funding drive, Julian Teicke, CEO and founder of wefox, explained, “We’ve grown our business significantly over the last six years since we launched and we have delivered strong year-on-year growth. 

“This year we took several important steps, such as unifying the business under one wefox brand, expanding into Poland, and setting up a deep tech team in Paris. Within the next few years, we will expand our global footprint, increase our presence in Europe, and move into both the US and Asian markets. 

“wefox will become the leading personal insurance company within the decade.”

Teicke said wefox had set out to improve the customer experience for both its advisors and customers through technology to increase customer satisfaction, reduce customer acquisition costs, increase cross-selling, and decrease churn.

He added, “This is why wefox has built a huge network of advisors across Europe. We believe that insurance is all about people, and we believe that technology is an enabler and should not replace the human connection.”

wefox expansion plans

wefox will continue to deliver a loss ratio supported in large part by its straight-through-processing (STP) of more than 80%, and a central product factory that swiftly distributes new products to the market due to its full stack insurance technology.

CFO and founder of wefox, Fabian Wesemann, expanded on the inturtech’s growth strategy, saying, “This investment strengthens our growth strategy and moves us closer to realising our vision - to prevent 30% of risks from happening - in order to offer the most advanced service to our customers. 

“As part of this, we want to ensure that we are building the technology to automate our business processes to have a STP ratio consistently above 80%.”

He continued, “This investment round is the culmination of six years of hard work and we are still at the very early stage of our business. I want to thank the entire wefox team for their hard work in enabling us to achieve such incredible results.”

Wefox’s full-stack digital insurance offering is the parent company of wefox Insurance, which is the in-house regulated insurance carrier. Since it’s 2015 launch, it has attracted a series of high-level investors.

Goldman Sachs International were hired as the private placement agent to wefox for the financing round.

Yaron Valler, General Partner at Target Global, pointed out that wefox has consistently delivered “exceptional results” and that this has been backed with demonstrable year-on-year revenue growth, which saw their insurance carrier, wefox Insurance, report a profit earlier this year. 

He said, “We invested in wefox in their series A round in 2016 and we are delighted to be leading this series C round. Wefox is unique among the insurtech players with ample room for growth ahead.”

Timeline of wefox funding rounds

• 2021: Series C round $650M led by Target Global.
• 2019: Series B round $235M led by Mubadala Capital.
• 2017: Series A round of $30M led by Horizons Ventures and Target Global.
• 2016: Seed round of $5.5M led by Salesforce Ventures.