Delaware-based InsurTech Joyn Insurance announced in January that it completed a $17.7 million Series A funding round led by OMERS Ventures, with participation from Avanta Ventures, ManchesterStory, Cohen Circle, SiriusPoint, and several private individual investors.

The new funding, which brings the company’s total raised to more than $30 million, will be used to further enhance its technology platform and data capabilities, according to a company press release. It will also contribute to expanding the size of Joyn’s team by the end of this year, as well as providing crucial operating capital to grow the business in an effort to reach its goal of becoming cashflow positive within the next year, CEO Seraina Macia told Carrier Management.

“Joyn is focused on the high end of small business and the low end of middle market business. We call it middle business,” she said. “It’s focused 100% on non-admitted, and basically, this business is very manual and very underserved. Our value proposition is really providing a tech-enabled, transparent, consistent experience to our distribution partners.”

Launched in July 2021, Joyn Insurance integrates insurance, data, and technology expertise within the excess and surplus space to offer underwriting and workflow services for the market. Since entering the market, Joyn has bound more than 500 policies with approximately 80 trading partners, covering more than 300 insureds. Today, Joyn offers E&S coverage for property, general liability, and excess for companies in 36 states and Washington, D.C.

“We built this company to remove the pain points and operational inefficiencies that have frustrated brokers and underwriters for as long as we can remember, and we are proud to be delivering on this bold mission,” Macia said.

She said the company focuses on leveraging the value of automation, while understanding the balance of having a human touch involved in the underwriting process.

“Our technology really automates process steps that can be automated using a lot of third party data,” she said. “Then it hands the business off to an underwriter where you need a human in the loop or where you need judgment. So really, our value proposition is that we understand how to maximize what the machine can do best and what a human can do best.”

She said she sees automation becoming an even bigger trend in InsurTech this year.

“One of the trends that we’re pushing is that we’re saying, ‘We have a different operating model, and we won’t need as many people because we can leverage the technology…'” she said. “And hopefully you’ll see other industry participants pushing the lever of true automation and integration so that we, as an industry, can kind of raise the bar on ourselves and reduce the costs.”

Technology expertise alone, however, won’t serve InsurTechs without having insurance experts on board, she added, which is why she’s also observed a shift in the type of talent InsurTechs are seeking.

“The InsurTech space has shifted significantly. It went from having people from outside of the industry come in and say, ‘Hey, let’s disrupt this with technology’ to the venture capital world realizing, ‘You know what? This industry is very, very particular, and you do actually need some insurance expertise,'” she said. “So what you’re going to be seeing is a lot more people with insurance expertise come into the industry.”

Despite a challenging environment right now with inflationary pressure and some investor hesitancy, Macia said she is proud of this recent funding round and excited for what lies ahead at Joyn.

“It’s a very challenging environment, so it took us a lot longer to raise the money, but we ended up in a really great place with being oversubscribed and backed by world class investors,” she said. “We feel really excited about what lies ahead of us.”

TigerRisk Capital Markets & Advisory acted as financial advisor to SiriusPoint in this transaction.