In the first half of 2016, startups across the insurance tech landscape raised more than $1 billion in investment. While venture investors and corporates are making more insurance tech bets, the insurance industry has seen relatively few major wins for venture investors, according to CB Insights data.
As the chart below highlights, the largest venture-backed insurance M&A or IPO at the time of exit was Climate Corp‘s $1.1B acquisition by Monsanto though, under Monsanto, Climate Corp sold its crop insurance business to AmTrust North America in July 2015. Esurance, which along with Answer Financial was bought by Allstate in May 2011 for $1B, had earlier been acquired by White Mountains in 2000 after raising funding from Redpoint Ventures and Global Retail Ventures in 1999 and so is not included in the data below. Update (11/30/2016): Electronics warranty services provider SquareTrade’s $1.4B acquisition by Allstate now registers as the largest venture-backed exit to date.
Guidewire Software, which recently backed on-demand personal item insurance app Trov, was the most successful VC-backed insurance tech IPO, with a market cap today of $4.52B. The company’s largest shareholders at the time of IPO were U.S. Venture Partners and Bay Partners.
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