Clearcover, a Chicago-based startup that’s changing the way people buy car insurance, just raised its third round of funding as it continues to grow into one of the city’s most promising insuretech companies.
The startup announced Friday that it closed a $50 million Series C round led by OMERS Ventures. Previous investors American Family Ventures, Cox Enterprises and IA Capital Group also participated in the round.
As part of the funding, Michael Yang, a managing partner at OMERS Ventures, will join Clearcover’s board, the company said.
The new round of funding follows Clearcover’s $43 million Series B round last January and brings the company’s total funding to more than $104 million since its founding in 2016. In 2017, Clearcover raised $11.5 million.
Founded by CEO Kyle Nakatsuji, a former VC at American Family Insurance, Clearcover has built a platform that makes car coverage cheaper by making operations, marketing and distribution more cost effective, and then passes along the savings to customers in the form of lower-cost, higher-quality car insurance.
Clearcover pays its partners, like finance apps and automotive websites, to integrate an API it developed onto their websites. Once functioning on a partner’s website, the API platform analyzes visitor data to provide personalized quotes to customers seeking to buy car insurance.
In 2019, Clearcover said it tripled policy sales year over year. Last year, when Clearcover raised its Series B round, it only offered its services in California. In just a year, Clearcover expanded significantly and is now available in Arizona, California, Illinois, Ohio and Utah.
Clearcover says it will use the new financing to continue building out its tech and launch in new markets and states throughout the U.S. Clearcover, which is just one of several insuretech startups that have launched in Chicago over the last few years, also plans to double its current headcount across its product, engineering and data science teams. Clearcover currently employs 128 people, up from about 50 last January.
“The market is taking notice of how Clearcover is redesigning the model of running an insurance company in further service of customers,” Nakatsuji said in a statement. “This investment enables us to continue delivering better coverage—for up to 230 million licensed US drivers—for less money.”
