Participated · Series E · Mar 2022

Policygenius is an online insurance marketplace that enables users to discover coverage gaps and compare tailored policies through its Insurance Checkup™ and proprietary quoting engines. Founded in 2014 and based in Brooklyn, New York, the company has built integrations with major carriers and proprietary technology for quoting, underwriting, and fulfillment. It focuses on life, disability, home, and auto insurance and has invested in exclusive, integrated no-exam life offerings to address COVID-related medical exam impacts and improve the customer experience. Policygenius also offers Policygenius Pro and continues expanding its core businesses. In 2021 the company wrote $40 billion of new life insurance coverage, nearly 70% more than in 2019, and its home and auto new written premiums grew more than 6x from 2019 to 2021. Policygenius is on pace to be the single largest distribution platform for term life insurance this year. Policygenius provides a digital experience that guides consumers through the entire insurance buying process for multiple product lines, including life, home, auto, disability and renters. The company has built integrations with major insurance carriers and technology for quoting, underwriting and fulfillment to streamline purchase flow. In 2019 it launched a new property and casualty offering that scaled to more than $10 million in revenue in less than 12 months. Policygenius plans to use new funding for hiring and to unveil broader consumer financial protection products in 2020. The company was co-founded in 2014 by Jennifer Fitzgerald and Francois de Lame and operates from New York City and Durham, North Carolina. Its platform emphasizes carrier integrations and end-to-end digital underwriting and fulfillment. PolicyGenius has built an online marketplace and quoting engine that lets consumers answer questions, compare multiple insurance carriers and view side-by-side policy options. It began with life insurance and expanded to health, renters, long-term disability and pet insurance, and it also offers an "insurance checkup" tool to identify coverage gaps. The company reports that since its $15 million financing in January 2016 it has grown monthly revenues 7x and doubled its employee base. With the new financing it plans to expand into property and casualty policies and deepen partnerships with carrier partners. PolicyGenius has raised $52 million in venture funding to date. Co-founder and CEO Jennifer Fitzgerald said the company selected Norwest for its work with strong consumer-facing brands. PolicyGenius is a Brooklyn-based online insurance brokerage offering content, advice, online quotes and an application process for life, long-term disability, renters, and pet insurance. The company emphasizes its content and an insurance checkup tool as core product features. PolicyGenius had reached 800,000 users by the end of 2015. It operates as a broker and charges insurers a commission for each policy it places. CEO Jennifer Fitzgerald declined to disclose how many users became policyholders, so conversion and revenue figures were not provided. Fitzgerald said the company could in future white-label insurance products from carriers and sell them under its own brand. PolicyGenius operates a multi-product consumer insurance advice and shopping platform offering life, long-term disability, renters and pet insurance comparisons. Launched in July 2014 by Jennifer Fitzgerald and Francois de Lame, the company guides users through an Insurance Checkup™ — a five-minute Q&A that produces a personalized review of insurance needs. The platform combines expert content, partnerships and affiliate channels to expand accessibility and reach. PolicyGenius plans to strengthen existing product lines and refine individual insurance quoting engines. The company will scale its marketing and production teams in its Brooklyn offices and use strategic investor insight to quickly test and iterate new tools and services. The business recently completed a Series A financing to support these initiatives.

Participated · Series C · Oct 2021

Beacon Platform is a NYC-based cloud platform for quant development that enables users to build custom trading and risk-management applications. Led by CEO Kirat Singh, the company provides quant technology, elastic cloud infrastructure, and front-office applications for financial markets. Its integrated development environment and web application framework allow users to develop enterprise-scale analytics, trading, and risk-management applications. Industry leaders including PIMCO, Blackstone, Shell New Energies, Global Atlantic, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia use Beacon’s solution. Beacon closed a $56M Series C and plans to use the funds to expand engineering, sales, customer-facing teams, and operations to scale across multiple markets and geographies. Beacon Platform offers a cloud-based application development platform for capital markets, providing pre-built applications, a financial development toolkit, transparent source code, and infrastructure services. The platform is designed to empower developers, quants, data scientists and business users to scale analytics, trading, risk management and other front- to back-office applications. Beacon says customers including global banks, asset managers, insurers and commodity trading firms have saved time and money; its client list now includes Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Shell New Energies and SMBC Capital Markets. The company reports its user base grew 150% over the past 12 months and emphasizes that clients can own the full technology stack via delivered source code. Beacon plans to use new capital to expand operations and accelerate product development while continuing to scale across financial institutions. Beacon Platform, launched in 2014, provides a developer platform along with infrastructure services and front-office applications licensed to institutional clients. The company serves global investment banks, asset managers, insurance companies, and commodities trading firms. Beacon is led by CEO Kirat Singh and COO Mark Higgins and employs more than 70 people. It maintains offices in New York, London, Berlin, and Tokyo. The company closed a Series A funding round (amount undisclosed) as reported in April 2018. No revenue or user metrics were disclosed in the article.

Led · Debt Financing · Apr 2018

Sunlight Financial is a technology-enabled finance company that provides point-of-sale consumer loans for residential solar, batteries and roofing through partnerships with installers, distributors and sales organizations nationwide. Its platform includes an intuitive installer portal and robust APIs designed to enable a fast, frictionless point-of-sale process for homeowners and partners. The company positions itself as an originator of high-quality assets and has secured more than $1 billion of capital for loans to homeowners. Sunlight aims to expand its product suite, enhance its technology platform, add strategic partners, and deepen existing partnerships to support growth in solar and adjacent home-improvement financing. Management describes the company as the fastest growing solar financing provider nationwide and emphasizes opportunities driven by the roughly $60 billion solar and energy-efficiency market. Sunlight Financial originates and finances loans for residential solar installations, positioning itself as a lender in the shift from third‑party leases toward solar loans and cash purchases. The company announced an additional $225 million capital raise to support loan originations and expects to finance more than 9,000 homes with that capital, at roughly $25,000 per loan. Using the U.S. average system size of about 5.7 kW-DC, the article estimates an implied all‑in cost of roughly $4.40/W for the loans Sunlight finances. EnergySage data show Sunlight breaking into the top 10 loan providers by market share. The company has grown through several large financings since 2015 to support nationwide expansion and to capture demand as the market shifts away from leases. No revenue or user counts were reported in the article. Sunlight Financial provides loan products and an online platform that enables homeowners to apply for credit and sign loan documents for residential solar systems. The company partners with solar installers, sales organizations and equipment distributors nationwide to simplify and streamline lending for system ownership. Its platform is used by installers and sales teams to offer loans to homeowners across the United States. Sunlight emphasizes capital markets expertise, risk management and consumer credit experience to support installer partners. The company plans to introduce new financing products, expand its Charlotte operations center, and partner with additional solar installers as part of its growth strategy. Financially, Sunlight has secured a $130 million commitment from Route 66 Ventures to support its expansion and product development. Sunlight Financial provides long-term loans to finance the installation of residential rooftop solar systems through market-leading installers and large equipment distributors. The company offers a broad suite of loan products aimed at channel partners and homeowners and emphasizes cost-effective capital and robust service offerings to scale with installers. Its strategy is to grow with several installers to minimize customer acquisition costs and overhead while expanding distribution. Sunlight recently secured $300 million in capital commitments to expand its business platform and increase access to lower-cost financing for residential rooftop solar assets. Management states the capital will be used to deploy loans and enhance product offerings to better serve customers and channel partners. Leadership changes tied to the financing include Neil Z. Auerbach becoming executive chairman while CEO Matthew R. Potere will continue to lead the executive team and hold a board seat.