Insurtech Urban Jungle raises €1.1m in funding round
UK fintech Urban Jungle has raised €1.1m ($1.3m) in seed funding towards its tech-driven insurance service for young renters. The investment, led by Rob Devey, former CEO of Prudential UK and HBOS insurance, will help the London-based start-up increase the choice of products available to its customers, such as one targeted at house and flat shares. Urban Jungle was founded in 2016 by Jimmy Williams and Greg Smyth, who felt young people were excluded from the insurance market as it failed to keep up with their changing lifestyles.

Urban Jungle, a London-based FinTech startup revamping insurance for young people, has secured €1.1 million seed funding from a group of top angel investors, in order to build a better home insurance experience for the growing population of renters. The financing round was led by Rob Devey, ex CEO of Prudential UK and HBOS insurance. This capital injection will support the startup’s plans to launch several new products, including one targeted at the growing number of house and flat shares.

Urban Jungle was founded in 2016. The founders Jimmy Williams and Greg Smyth looked at the insurance industry, and noted both that poor tech was making it difficult to buy and use, and that young people were being excluded from insurance because it was failing to keep pace with their changing lifestyles. They believe they can transform the insurance experience by completely rebuilding the tech stack, using modern technologies, for example through smartphone-first design, and using machine learning to improve risk scoring.

Jimmy Williams commented: “This investment marks a big step towards our mission to build an insurance provider that customers love. Through 2017, we focused on building a business that our customers can rely on 100% when something goes wrong. In 2018 we’ll vastly increase the choice of products for our customers, and make all of our products even easier to use.”

Rob Devey, who led both this, and the business’ previous round of funding commented: “I’m very excited about the huge opportunity to transform the insurance industry using technology, and think this team is superbly well placed to capitalise on that. They have proven their ability to execute to a very highly quality over the past year, and I’m confident that they will only accelerate from here.”