Send raises £9m — defining the next era of insurance
TL;DR
- Paris-based VC Breega led Send’s first institutional round, alongside Mercia, of £9m
- An accomplishment in the current market reflecting the momentum and potential of what the team is building
- They’re tackling a high-growth market, with the opportunity to be category-defining
- The team has gone from strength to strength in the past year, executing with leading players in the commercial insurance space, processing £3.5bn in GWP (Gross Written Premium) via the platform, and growing their ARR by 175%
Underwriting: the foundation of the insurance industry, but one which previously escaped true innovation
A day in the life of an underwriter is difficult. Time and effort are still required for low-value, manually intensive tasks such as sourcing data for submissions, or filtering out submissions. Data accuracy is also a problem; often incomplete, in silos, and in different formats, leading to frequent back and forth between brokers and underwriters.
The market is clearly frustrated at the lack of innovation; Accenture found that 82% of insurers believe that they need to innovate faster than ever to keep a competitive advantage, with many having to wait more than 18 months to implement alterations to the underwriting process, landlocked by rigid legacy systems.
Enter, Send’s Connected Workbench for agile insurers
Using Send’s Underwriting Workbench, commercial insurers get a consolidated view of all tasks and risks and can track work throughout the entire lifecycle. By automating admin-heavy work with powerful AI, they’ve helped insurers, reinsurers and MGAs streamline underwriting processes, improve predictability, expand their capabilities and ultimately, allow them to focus on the work that matters.
They have set a new standard for composable insurance with their fluid, modular platform, which has the ability to create new MVPs with minimum risk, safely make changes backed up by enterprise-grade security, and easily sail the winds of strategic business and future market changes. Customers can build, test and release capabilities in days (rather than months) with end-user involvement and real-time feedback.
Maxence Drummond, VC Principal from Breega commented:
We are delighted to lead this round and support Send in its conquest of new markets. To date, Send has the most reliable and user-friendly solution in the underwriting workbench market. Send is paving the way for a more agile industry, helping insurers, reinsurers and MGAs to transform traditional practices. At Breega, we strongly believe in their potential to become a global category leader in this space.
Why we love Send:
Up against fierce incumbents in an RFP, the team’s first customer (a top 4 UK insurer) wanted to become more agile and regain control over underwriting and risk data. Send delivered a transformative underwriting workbench which today processes over 25 lines of business, £1bn GWP and has more than 400 users.
Since then, Send has gone from strength to strength with no external investment. The team is expanding delivery capability, formalising partnerships with leading corporates, and picking up more than their fair share of awards along the way.
We started working with the founders back in April when they implemented their first US customer in Bowhead — a significant participant in the specialty insurer market — where there was a clear opportunity to create an integrated underwriting solution for part of the market which had previously been under-served.
Fast forward to now, Send has over 60 staff members, 8 customers and a growing pipeline of opportunities in multiple geographies.
Jonathan Hollis, Managing Partner at Mountside Ventures said:
We are thrilled for Andy, Ben, Matt and the Send team for completing their round, especially in such a difficult fundraising market, and look forward to watching them build a category-defining business in a market that is ripe for innovation.
Send Co-Founder and CEO Andy Moss said.
We found the team at Mountside on hand and responsive at every stage of our raise. They guided us in building a robust financial model, putting together a narrative that would appeal to investors, identifying relevant funds by leveraging their network, and really took the time to understand our needs and vision for the future.
Hugo Lough from Mercia added:
As the following investor, Mountside supported us to rapidly get up to speed on the agreed terms and to understand Breega’s approach which ultimately helped us to build conviction not just in the company, but in the people round the table. Given this was the team’s first institutional raise, it’s clear that Mountside had done a lot of work to help them prepare.
What’s next?
The team is focused on retaining its first-mover advantage and accelerating product development, growing sales and marketing functions, building a partner program and bringing in exceptional and diverse talent.
We expect to see Send as the leader in the commercial insurance space very soon, and wish them the best of luck with continuous business execution!
If you’re a founder as ambitious as this team, we’d love to hear from you — submit details of your company here. We aim to respond to everyone within 48 hours!
