TrustLayer nailed down more than $15 million in new venture financing. The Florida-based InsurTech, focused on digitizing the insurance verification process, plans to use the money for hiring, expansion and further product development.

Open positions are in areas including sales, marketing and engineering. Expectations are that the funding will also fuel further work on TrustLayer’s live digital proof of coverage product, along with integrations with a number of insurance carrier systems of record. This will build on pilots with major carriers such as Liberty Mutual and Nationwide.

Craft Ventures led the $15.1 million Series A round. Returning investors Abstract Ventures, Box Group, Propel Venture Partners, NFP Ventures, Sure Ventures, and new investor PruVen Capital also participated. As part of the funding round, Brian Murray, Partner and COO at Craft Ventures, will join TrustLayer’s Board of Directors.

“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,” John Fohr, co-founder and CEO of TrustLayer, said in prepared remarks. “We look forward to continuing this momentum with the support of our investors.”

TrustLayer, launched two years ago, designed an AI-focused collaborative risk management platform working to digitize what it said is the “highly manual, error-prone, and paper-based process of insurance verification” for “supplier-driven sectors such as construction, banking, property management, and sports entertainment.” Along with the AI, robotic process automation comes into play to automate the process securely, so companies can automatically verify the insurance and licenses of their vendors, suppliers, borrowers and tenants.

The startup said it is backed by 20 of the top 100 brokerages, including the Graham Company, Holmes Murphy, Heffernan Insurance Brokers, M3, and BrokerTech Ventures, TrustLayer said.

TrustLayer noted that after a number of successful pilots in 2020, some major insurance brokers both invested in the company and became sales channel partners, reselling the service to their own customers. BrokerTech Ventures, a group made up of 13 of the most innovative insurance agencies in the U.S. and 11 top-tier insurance companies, made TrustLayer their first investment in a company that completed their accelerator program.

Over the past year, TrustLayer has announced 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 Precore.

Source: TrustLayer