Insurtech startup Young Alfred raises $10 million Series A funding for its home insurance marketplace

The need for a home insurance expert is rising. Home insurance premiums will hit over $100 billion of annual premium in 2019, and closer to $140 billion by 2025 (William Blair Research – 2019 Homeowners Acquisition Cost Report: Homeowners Market Presents Big Opportunities). Premium growth is driven by an increased frequency of catastrophic events. For example, nine separate $10B+ events have hit US homeowners in just the past four years.

Enter Young Alfred, an insurtech startup that provides an online marketplace to help you easily compare and buy home insurance. The startup uses machine learning to identify customer risks and needs prior to presenting custom recommendations, and save them money. Young Alfred uses data to match consumers to the best coverage options and allows them to buy without having to pick up the phone.

Today, the Philadelphia, PA-based startup announced it has closed $10 million in Series A funding to hire engineering, sales and business development talent, and scale its marketing efforts to bring the best in class home insurance shopping experience to both homeowners and partners. The round was led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused venture fund. Seed round investors Pear Ventures, ERA, with participation from Newfund Capital.

Founded in 2016 by David Stasie and Jason Christiansen, Young Alfred is solving the insurance distribution problem with one platform to shop, bind, and manage coverage. The two co-founders launched Young Alfred while attending Wharton Business School. With their experience in hedge funds and private equity, they were surprised by the small amount of data available to consumers during the home insurance purchasing process. So they created Young Alfred to empower homeowners with the data to compare and purchase coverage online by highlighting the fine print under each policy form.

As a licensed insurance agency in all 50 states, and with direct relationships to over 30 insurance carriers, Young Alfred is the expert on home insurance for a broad range of geographies and home types. Young Alfred has direct partnerships with over 30 insurance carriers and is licensed in 51 states. The startup has offices in New York City, NY and Philadelphia, PA.

Young Alfred has 20x’d sales over the last 18 months. While Young Alfred was created for homeowners, other parties are now taking notice. “We have received a lot of inbound demand from fintechs and large players in the real estate industry looking for a seamless online home insurance shopping solution, which does not currently exist in the market,” said David.

“With new resources that Gradient brings to the table, Young Alfred is on track to release a Stripe-like API for partners looking to add P&C to their suite of consumer product offerings. We’re on a mission to unlock access to home insurance for everyone in America,” continued Jason.

Young Alfred is built to connect insurance carriers to the digital-savvy shopper. Online insurance forms are nothing new, but allowing homeowners to compare and bind coverage without a phone call is uncharted territory. While the company has removed the phone call from the home insurance transaction, Young Alfred still has licensed agents on staff to provide professional advice when needed. Young Alfred lets the customer choose how they want to shop either via email, text, chat, call, or nothing at all.

It’s no secret what partners are after. “Young Alfred matches consumers to the insurance best-suited to their personal needs in minutes. Utilizing data, integrations and machine learning, the company optimizes the customer experience and finds the best results,” said Zach Bratun-Glennon, Partner at Gradient Ventures, who will be joining Young Alfred’s board. “This fits with insurance carriers’ goals because each carrier has different priorities for the policies and risks that they want to underwrite.”