Herald, a leading digital infrastructure provider for commercial insurance, announced a $12 million Series A funding round co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Brewer Lane Ventures with Afore Capital and Underscore Venture Capital participation.
This funding round will accelerate Herald's development of a unified API that digitally connects insurance brokers with carriers while enhancing the platform's AI capabilities to streamline commercial insurance workflows.
Brokerages digitizing the manual placement process 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 8 of the top 25 largest brokerages, collaborating with services and technology partners who build innovative brokerage offerings.
Herald enables brokerages to connect with 80+ insurance products from 35+ carrier partners in several 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.
With the insurance industry continuing 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. And the platform eliminates redundant data entry and simplifies workflows, allowing brokers to provide more accurate information while enabling carriers to underwrite more precisely.
Brokers selling commercial insurance handle 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 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 latest funding round, Herald plans to expand its AI capabilities, build new products, and strengthen its relationships with carriers, positioning itself as a major driver of innovation in the digital transformation of commercial insurance.
KEY QUOTES:
"Our API gives brokers the flexibility to work within their preferred workflows, whether it's in a CRM or a custom-built platform. This funding allows us to accelerate our mission of making broker-carrier connectivity more seamless while expanding our capabilities to serve both sides of the market."
"Herald's work in building an open data standard is a crucial step toward streamlining the entire industry. By standardizing data flows between brokers and carriers, Herald is making insurance processes faster, more efficient, and more accurate. We're proud to co-lead this round and support this transformative vision."