Herald, the digital infrastructure provider for commercial insurance, announced a $12 million Series A round co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Brewer Lane Ventures with participation from Afore Capital and Underscore Venture Capital.
The proceeds from the funding round will now aim to support Insurtech Herald’s development of a unified API that digitally connects insurance brokers with carriers, while improving the platform’s AI capabilities to “streamline commercial insurance workflows.”
Brokerages digitizing the manual process of placement integrate Herald’s API into their existing workflows, including their Agency Management System (AMS), Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) or “custom-built platform, to enable their brokers to quote and bind insurance in real time.”
Herald works with eight of the top-25 largest brokerages and collaborates with “services and technology partners who build innovative offerings for brokerages.”
Herald enables brokerages to connect with 80+ insurance products from “35+ carrier partners along a number of lines of business, such as Cyber Insurance, Management Liability, Professional Liability, Business Owners Policy (BOP), General Liability (GL), and Workers’ Compensation.”
This diverse product offering allows carriers to “reach brokers efficiently and expand their digital distribution channels.”
As the insurance industry continues to modernize, “disconnected systems, duplicative data entry and inconsistent data standards have long hindered efficiency.”
Herald is realizing its vision of establishing a modern, open data standard for the industry.
The platform eliminates redundant data entry and simplifies workflows, allowing brokers to provide more accurate information while “enabling carriers to underwrite with greater precision.”
As explained in the update from the Insurtech firm, Herald’s approach is redefining data interoperability “across the insurance ecosystem, setting a new industry benchmark.”
Brokers selling commercial insurance handle a high volume of complex transactions, often across “disparate, disconnected systems, leading to inefficiencies.”
Herald’s AI-powered capabilities enable brokerages and carriers to “extract, transform, and load data from various formats – such as PDFs and spreadsheets – into a unified transaction standard.”
By automating these processes, Herald speeds up workflows and “removes the burden of human input.”
With this funding round, Herald intends to expand its AI capabilities, add new products, and further strengthen its relationships with carriers, positioning itself as “a key driver of innovation in the digital transformation of commercial insurance.”
Herald offers the API infrastructure for connecting brokers to a range of insurance carriers, enabling them to “quote, bind, and issue” insurance products efficiently.
Herald’s platform is agnostic, making it “adaptable to any front-end system.”