\Fintech News/ Insurtech Hedvig raises €9m in bid to become Europe’s Lemonade Can the Swedish insurtech company spark off the tepid sector of home insurance in Europe? By Mimi Billing 27 August 2019 Credit: Swedish insurtech startup Hedvig just raised €9,3m. Credit: Swedish insurtech startup Hedvig just raised €9,3m. \Other Fastest-growing direct-to-consumer startups 2020 By Connor Bilboe 21 December 2020 \Fintech News/ Insurtech Hedvig raises €9m in bid to become Europe’s Lemonade Can the Swedish insurtech company spark off the tepid sector of home insurance in Europe? By Mimi Billing 27 August 2019 The Swedish home insurance startup Hedvig has raised €9,3m from San Francisco based Obvious Ventures and Swedish retailer group Axel Johnson’s venture leg D-Ax. Many of the most successful startups in the insurtech sector are brokers for insurance products, but Hedvig somewhat breaks the mould being an actual home insurer. The company uses technology to automate many of the processes including pricing and claims. According to the cofounder Lucas Carlsén, much of the claim process is already automated. Advertisement “It means that if you lose your laptop in Copenhagen, you would open the Hedvig app to record a voice message. From that voice message we can determine what happened and then trigger an automatic payoff, which would happen in a couple of minutes,” Carlsén tells Sifted. Hedvig’s founders Fredrik Fors, John Ardelius and Lucas Carlsén. One of Hedvig’s selling points is that, in comparison to the large and established insurance companies, it wants to be a “nice” company. Apart from taking its cut on what users pay in insurance fees, the money that is not paid out in claims is donated to charities. “This is one of the last industries that are still sort of untouched by innovation and equality. So what we set out to do was changing the business model of insurance, to make sure that we should never earn more by paying out less,” Carlsén says. Hedvig must be doing something right. The company has attracted angel investors such as Khaled Helioui — who is also an investor in Uber, Deliveroo and Bolt — as well as Sophia Bendz, partner at Atomico, and Victor Jacobsson, one of the co-founders of Klarna. Hedvig is also backed by Berlin-based venture capital company Cherry Ventures. But it’s still early days for Hedvig. With only 15,000 customers in Sweden, the company is planning to invest the new capital in growing both its customer base, in Sweden and later internationally, and by expanding its insurance offering to houses, instead of just serving flats as before. The insurance market is anything but sexy. But for a startup offering a different approach than the big insurance companies, it can be worth billions. American company Lemonade, which started off by offering home insurance in New York back in 2015, has raised $480m from Softbank. This summer it also embarked on Europe by launching in Germany. The competition is not something that worries Carlsén though. Although insurtech is a commonly used word for the startup’s sector, most companies within it are middlemen creating a better user experience but are co-operating with the big insurance companies. German startup Getsafe, an insurance broker that has so far raised $23m dollar according to Crunchbase, is an example of that. The Belgian startup Qover, that recently raised €8m has a different model offering digital companies insurance-as-a-service. Advertisement Help Sifted get bigger and better (and get a sneak peak at our future plans). Please take our reader survey. Take the survey Terms of Use Related Articles The best London startups to work at in 2021 By Freya Pratty Click here to read more Tony Blair’s son secures UK’s biggest ever edtech raise By Freya Pratty Click here to read more Glovo partners with real estate investor to pile €100m into ‘dark stores’ By Tim Smith in Barcelona Click here to read more Perchpeek: the startup that wants to help anyone work from anywhere By Freya Pratty Click here to read more Get the best of Sifted in your inbox By entering your email you agree to Sifted’s Terms of Use Sign up to \Future Proof Sifted’s weekly \Corporate Innovation roundup email By entering your email you agree to Sifted’s Terms of Use Most Read 1 \Fintech Inside Revolut’s bid to become a bank 2 \Venture Capital Europe’s top climate tech investors 3 \Mobility Glovo partners with real estate investor to pile €100m into ‘dark stores’ 4 \Venture Capital Klarna cofounder Niklas Adalberth’s Norrsken Foundation launches €100m impact fund 5 \Mobility Last-mile-delivery startup Budbee raises €52m as ecommerce booms Join the conversation Subscribe Notify of new follow-up comments new replies to my comments
Glovo partners with real estate investor to pile €100m into ‘dark stores’ By Tim Smith in Barcelona Click here to read more
Perchpeek: the startup that wants to help anyone work from anywhere By Freya Pratty Click here to read more