Finaeo ( https://www.finaeo.com ), announced today that the Company has closed its Seed Round, oversubscribed at $2.25M, lead by Impression Ventures with participation from Toronto-based angel investors, 500 Startups, Robo Ventures and iGan Partners.
Finaeo helps financial advisors win in a digital era. By digitizing the administrative process from prospect-to-purchase, they help advisors reduce the burden of manual paperwork and old processes. A robust front-end platform, delivered as software as a service, allows advisors to better manage and serve their end-customers.
"The investment enables us to pursue an opportunity to resolve a disconnect in the industry," said Aly Dhalla, CEO, and co-founder. "We believe the future of advisors is the hybrid 'bionic' advisor: blending robo-advice, AI capabilities, and the necessary human touch. Advisors are here to stay, but they will need to evolve to stay relevant.”
The funds will be deployed to bring on the engineering talent required to continue development of the core platform and marketplace. “Using the platform to enable the demand-side of the market, Finaeo is establishing a policy marketplace that links customers, brokers and insurance companies by creating the underlying ‘connective tissue’ to automate the data flow, which traditionally has been a highly manual and cumbersome supply chain process,” states Donald Chu, COO and co-founder. “By connecting the stack, Finaeo morphs into a Digital Intermediary that provides advisors, their clients, and suppliers an end-to-end digital experience.”
“This is an industry ripe for innovation,” says Christian Lassonde, Founder and Managing Partner of Impression Ventures. “Finaeo is disrupting the insurance supply chain by digitizing and automating the end to end process, making it more transparent and efficient to purchase insurance. The Finaeo team has the capability, background and proven track record to scale their solution. All of these factors combined is exactly what we look for when making early stage investments." Lassonde will be joining the Finaeo Board.
In 2016, the total North American insurance intermediary layer generated approximately $220B in revenues, of which the total addressable market for individual insurance (Life, Critical Illness, Disability, etc.) and group insurance (employee benefits) is approximately $66B.
“With the push for employers to provide competitive hiring packages and the increased risk of health related deaths, the push for insurance distribution will likely continue to rise,” states Dhalla. “With that said, the customer experience must evolve and advisors need to adopt a technology-first approach to their business to keep up. There are approximately 1.1M financial advisors in North America. Finaeo will be the partner that will keep them competitive.”
About Finaeo Inc.
Finaeo is a Canadian insurtech platform built for financial advisors, particularly with a focus towards group benefits and individual/voluntary insurance. Finaeo helps advisors in these verticals automate their back-office administration by providing a digital assistant powered by a custom-built CRM engine. This combination uniquely leverages data to nudge them towards best practices, keeping them organized, prepared, and ready to sell, enabling them to focus on what matters most: Building Strong Client Relationships. Finaeo was co-founded by former insurance advisors in the group benefits space. To learn more, visit http://www.finaeo.com.
About Impression Ventures
Impression Ventures is a venture capital firm with committed capital sourced from some of Canada’s leading financial institutions, entrepreneurs, and financial services executives. The firm is focused on investing and leading deals in FinTech companies raising late seed to early Series A rounds, and looking to take their beta or MVP product to market locally, with a long-term goal of taking the product globally. Impression was founded in 2013 by entrepreneur Christian Lassonde and is co-managed by managing partner Maor Amar. Impression has offices in Toronto and Montreal.
