INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Planck Re, a startup that wants to simplify insurance underwriting with artificial intelligence, announced today that it has raised a $12
The funding was led by Arbor Ventures, with participation from Viola FinTech and Eight Roads
retail, contractors, IT and manufacturing, and grow its research and development team in Israel and North American sales team.The Tel Aviv
and New York-based startup plans to focus first on its business in the United States, where it has already launched pilot programs with
several insurance carriers
Planck Re poses its technology as a more efficient and accurate alternative to the lengthy risk assessment questionnaire insurers ask
Its platform crawls the Internet for publicly available data, including images, text, videos, social media profiles and public records, to
build profiles of SMBs seeking insurance coverage
Then it analyzes that data to help carriers figure out their potential risk.Before launching Planck Re, Tsur and Cohen founded Bluetail, a
data mining startup that was acquired by Salesforce in 2012, where it served as the base technology for Salesforce Einstein
Schapiro was previously CEO of financial analytics company Earnix.There are already a handful of startups, including SoftBank-backed
Lemonade, Tr?v, Cover, Hippo and Swyfft, that use algorithms to make picking and buying insurance policies easier for consumers, but
AI-based underwriting is still a nascent category
One example is Flyreel, which focuses on underwriting property insurance and recently signed a deal with Microsoft to accelerate its
go-to-market strategy.Tsur says Planck Re is developing more dedicated algorithms to meet the evolving needs of insurance providers
capabilities automatically check images for that information.He adds that being able to automate underwriting enables carriers to find new
distribution channels, including allowing customers to apply for insurance online without needing to fill out any forms
Insurance companies are thirsty for actionable data, to assess risk, gain real time insights and enhance customer understanding
