Tremor raises $10m. W. R. Berkley, Nephila, Markel & Anthemis participate

Tremor Technologies, Inc., the programmatic insurance and reinsurance risk transfer marketplace provider, has announced a fundraise of new investment capital totalling $10 million, featuring backing from well-known traditional and ILS industry names.

Insurance firm W. R. Berkley Corporation as well as other strategic investors have joined Tremor’s existing backers in this new round of fundraising for the smart risk marketplace insurtech.

Tremor has also revealed that its existing backers include the largest insurance-linked securities (ILS) fund manager Nephila Capital, as well as its parent company Markel Corporation, while its lead investor is financial technology venture capital specialist Anthemis Group.

Total reinsurance quotes made through insurance technology (InsurTech) start-up Tremor’s marketplace platform have already exceeded $1 billion, the company also revealed as it explained more detail on its traction to-date.

Impressively, six reinsurance auctions have been completed by Tremor so far, with the over $1 billion of quotes and lines bound of almost $500 million coming from more than 70 reinsurers, ILS funds and Lloyd’s syndicates.

Tremor has also been careful to ensure it can support a range of reinsurance transactions as well, with quotes facilitated and capacity now placed for several property catastrophe reinsurance treaties, retrocession placements and even industry loss warranty (ILW) transactions.

Tremor only completed its first placement at the end of 2018 (which it turns out was for new investor W. R. Berkley), in time for the January renewals, after which it then placed a property cat program for Markel in April and then more recently successfully placed the first ever programmatic parametric swap transaction in insurance form.

But clearly activity has also occurred outside of these three deals, as Tremor’s traction continues and market acceptance increases, resulting in new deal-flow using its marketplace.

Tremor expects to continue expanding its activity and is now planning to support its first facultative reinsurance placement later this quarter, offering potential users another example of how the programmatic marketplace technology can support their risk transfer needs.

Commenting on the progress made and the new fundraising, Sean Bourgeois, Tremor’s Founder and CEO, explained, “I am very proud of the team at Tremor. We have been laser focused on adding value to a specific part of the risk transfer value chain and making programmatic transactions happen.

“It is paying off.  We have received wonderful industry recognition for our tangible progress, and we were privileged to be a part of the Lloyd’s Lab, the insurtech innovation hub run by Lloyd’s of London.  Through the support of our investors and partners and this financing, we look forward to a very exciting 2020.”

Tremor also has further commitments for 2020 renewals to be executed on its platform, highlighting that adoption of its technology has risen by more than 50% in the last six months alone.

“We chose to place our main property catastrophe program with Tremor last year, after over 18 months of technical due diligence, because we believed its platform had the potential to bring important efficiencies and capabilities to the placement process.  We became a shareholder in Tremor because our use of the platform validated that early hypothesis, and we are enthusiastic about the potential positive impact Tremor’s technology can have on the insurance business,” W. Robert Berkley, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer, W. R. Berkley Corporation said.

Tremor said that the new capital raised in this fundraising round will be put to work in further developing its marketplace technology, to deliver enhanced quoting and management capabilities which should bring further efficiencies to reinsurance placement, as well as to hire new employees for its growing team.

The firm said it is looking ahead to a busy year-end, with a “strong pipeline” of new transactions set for placement using its technology, as well as new features set to be launched, including enhanced quoting, rich analytics, a broker interface and dashboard management, all of which Tremor said will further enhance the user experience for cedents, their brokers and also reinsurance capital providers.