TrustLayer gains $15.1m Series A

TrustLayer, a collaborative risk management platform, has raised $15.1 million in Series A funding. Craft Ventures led the round with participation from Abstract Ventures, Box Group, Propel Venture Partners, NFP Ventures, Sure Ventures and new PruVen Capital.

PRESS RELEASE

SAN FRANCISCO — August 18, 2021 — TrustLayer, a collaborative risk management platform, today announced it has closed a Series A funding round of $15.1 million. Craft Ventures led the round with participation from returning investors Abstract Ventures, Box Group, Propel Venture Partners, NFP Ventures, Sure Ventures, and new investor PruVen Capital. As part of the funding round, Brian Murray, Partner and COO at Craft Ventures, will join TrustLayer’s Board of Directors.

In just two years, TrustLayer has established itself as the preferred solution to replace the insurance industry’s antiquated, paper-based methods for verifying coverage, which introduce significant risk to supplier-driven sectors such as construction, banking, property management, and sports entertainment. TrustLayer is backed by 20 of the top 100 leading brokerages, including the Graham Company, Holmes Murphy, Heffernan Insurance Brokers, M3, and BrokerTech Ventures.

Research shows that 75 percent of U.S. businesses are underinsured. In addition to risk, the current process is costly for insurers and the companies requesting verification: 200,000 proof of coverage requests are made daily in the U.S., causing significant resource strain and administrative cost. TrustLayer uses robotic process automation (RPA) and AI to automate this process securely, so companies can automatically verify the insurance and licenses of their vendors, suppliers, borrowers, and tenants.

Following several successful pilots in 2020, leading insurance brokers both invested in the company and elected to become sales channel partners, reselling the service to their own customers. BrokerTech Ventures, a group made up of 14 of the most innovative insurance agencies in the U.S. and 12 top-tier insurance companies, made TrustLayer their first investment in a company that completed their accelerator program. TrustLayer is the only solution with this level of industry support.

“It’s clear that verification of insurance and business credentials is a pain point for millions of businesses, which is why we have seen such enthusiastic support for TrustLayer’s secure, automated solution,” said John Fohr, co-founder and CEO of TrustLayer. “We are especially proud to have such significant backing from a top-tier SaaS fund like Craft Ventures as well as some of the top insurance brokers in the country, a tremendous industry validation for our technology. We look forward to continuing this momentum with the support of our investors.”

The Series A financing comes after an impressive year for TrustLayer that included considerable growth in industries such as construction, property management, sports, and hospitality. The company is actively hiring top talent across its sales, marketing, and engineering teams to support the high demand for its solution. The new capital will also fuel the development of its live digital proof of coverage solution, and integrations with many insurance carrier systems of record, building upon pilots with major carriers such as Liberty Mutual, and Nationwide. TrustLayer’s real-time digital certificate will unlock even more value, enabling brokers to more easily sell the right policy to vendors with inadequate coverage and helping insurance carriers more accurately assess potential risks.

“Insurance helps mitigate risk. For businesses, insurance plays a critical role in the durability of its operations. The problem is no one is exactly sure who’s covered and by how much — we’re still swapping poorly scanned PDFs and faxes to prove outdated coverage,” said Brian Murray, Partner and COO at Craft Ventures. “TrustLayer fixes this. Their technology automates the collection and verification of insurance, helping companies and their partners accurately assess risk and avoid business interruption.”

Over the past year, TrustLayer has announced significant partnerships with associations and broker partners, including a recent partnership with Graham Company, one of the country’s largest insurance brokers and employee benefits consultants, and with Procore.

About TrustLayer
TrustLayer is an AI-powered collaborative risk management platform working to digitize the highly manual, error-prone, and paper-based process of insurance verification. With TrustLayer, companies can securely automate the verification of insurance, licenses, and compliance documents of their business partners (i.e., vendors, subcontractors, suppliers, borrowers, tenants, ridesharing, and franchisees) in an easy-to-use digital dashboard. TrustLayer is working with dozens of the largest brokers and carriers in the U.S. to build out a fully digital proof of insurance solution so companies will be able to validate in real-time that their business partners have the correct coverage. Founded by John Fohr and Vincenzo Acinapura, the company is backed by leading investors, including Craft Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Box Group, Propel Ventures, Sure Ventures and PruVen Capital, and has also received investments from more than 20 of the top 100 insurance brokers. To learn more, visit trustlayer.io, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.