By 
A car insurance start-up founded by identical twin brothers and backed by one of the first investors in Monzo has reached a $300m (£231m) valuation two years after it launched.
Marshmallow, which specialises in providing car insurance to immigrants and expats, has raised $30m in new funding.
The investment in the business comes from a venture capital firm and a large corporate, both of which wished to remain anonymous, according to co-founder Oliver Kent-Braham.
Existing investors, which include Passion Capital, an early backer of digital bank Monzo, and Investec Bank, also participated in the new funding round. Investec founder Bernard Kantor has a seat on the company’s board.
Mr Kent-Braham, who runs the business with his identical twin brother Alexander, said the company now plans to offer other types of insurance beyond the company’s original core product of car insurance.
The 28-year-old South West Londoners founded Marshmallow in 2017 with the aim of making it cheaper and easier for migrants to get car insurance. The start-up estimates there is a £400m deficit for migrant households in the UK due to higher insurance premiums.
“Insurance is a really old, stagnant industry. It’s so large and lacking innovation. We had a feeling that insurers probably weren’t doing their best work,” Oliver Kent-Braham said.
Traditional insurers have struggled to offer fair prices for immigrants, he added, because it is more difficult to find their address history and credit score.
“Instead of going a bit deeper and pricing people individually, they put the price up for everyone,” Mr Kent-Braham said. “It meant there was an opportunity to go in and be fair to that customer group and bring the price down for them.”
The business is part of a growing cohort of insurance technology start-ups in the UK which have picked up funding over the last 12 months. Zego, which offers vehicle insurance to food delivery drivers raised $42m in funding last year, while insurance app Cuvva raised £15m in December.
Marshmallow’s co-founder said the investor interest comes from backers who believe the UK market isn’t as advanced as the US when it comes to insurance.
“There’s a lot of appetite from investors who think we’re a couple of years behind the US,” Mr Kent-Braham said.
Comments