Exclusive: Kin Raises $63.9M In Series C Funding For Data-Driven Home Insurance

Home insurance startup Kin has raised $63.9 million in a Series C round, the company told Crunchbase News.

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The idea behind Chicago-based Kin is that it’s too hard to get home insurance, especially for homes that are more complicated or risky—something that’s getting more common as homes get older and the climate changes, according to CEO Sean Harper. 

Instead, Kin goes directly to the consumer. Not having a middleman makes the whole process cheaper and also allows Kin to target homeowners who the company believes is a good match. 

“Legacy insurance companies are really relying on user and broker-entered data, which isn’t very accurate and it isn’t very much,” Harper said. 

After receiving a customer’s address, Kin pulls in thousands of variables from third-party, independent sources of data. The company uses aerial and satellite imagery, and pulls data from online real estate and government records, such as building permits.

Kin’s founding team came from the world of fintech. When they decided they wanted to get into insurance and zeroed in on homeowners insurance, they brought in experts who had spent their careers at large insurance companies. 

Kin last raised money with a $23 million Series B in the summer of 2020, according to Crunchbase. The company is backed by investors including August Capital and Commerce Ventures, and the new round brings Kin’s total funding to more than $116 million.

In terms of growth, the company announced last month that it’d surpassed a $100 million run rate, a 300 percent increase from the previous year. 

The Series C round was led by Senator Investment Group and Hudson Structured Capital Management, doing their insurance and reinsurance business as HSCM Bermuda. Other investors in the round include the University of Chicago through its Startup Investment Program, along with Allegis NL Capital, and Alpha Edison.

“We were really excited that the company was getting a lot of traction with the direct model, underwriting effectively, and we saw an opportunity to optimize the business model to set the company up for future growth,” HSCM Bermuda vice president Andrew Sagon said in an interview.

The company plans on using the funding to ramp up hiring and expand into new geographies and products. 

Kin is currently operating in Florida, California, and Louisiana. The company has focused on areas where the weather’s been more volatile, it’s harder for customers to get insurance, and data can be a real advantage. The next areas on the company’s near-term roadmap include Texas, the rest of the gulf, and regions that touch the Atlantic Ocean (read: hurricane targets).

The only area the company isn’t very interested in is the Midwest, Harper said.

Illustration: Dom Guzman