ProNavigator Raises $5.6 Million to Accelerate Expansion and Extend AI-Driven Knowledge-Sharing Platform
Customer growth and funding validate ProNavigator’s unique ability to increase productivity within insurance brokerages and carriers
Toronto, ON (Sept. 2, 2030) – ProNavigator, an insurance technology (InsurTech) company that helps leading carriers and brokerages overcome information barriers, announced today that it has closed a CAD $5.6 million financing round.
This latest round was co-led by new investor Luge Capital and existing investors GreenSky Capital and MaRS IAF, who were joined by iNovia Capital, BDC, and CIBC Innovation Banking, and brings the company’s total amount raised to CAD $7.8 million. The new capital will be used to hire key resources to power expanded operations in the U.S. and Canada, and to extend ProNavigator’s product line.
This announcement comes on the heels of significant momentum for ProNavigator. Founded in 2016, the company’s solutions have been implemented by industry heavyweights HUB International, Wawanesa and TD Insurance to deliver superior customer service and to more effectively seize revenue opportunities, and earlier this year ProNavigator was the only Canadian company selected by the U.S.-based consortium of insurance players, BrokerTech Ventures, to deliver innovation into the U.S. insurance broker industry.
“Information is the lifeblood of insurance, but too often it doesn’t flow fast enough to meet the demands of the business – resulting in lost time, missed revenue opportunities and lowered productivity,” said Joseph D’Souza, ProNavigator’s CEO and founder. “Underwriting teams, claims staff and brokers spend many hours each day searching for information and answering the same questions over and over again. The information and language within the industry are very specialized, so generic approaches are insufficient – that’s why we purpose-engineered a solution that is 100 percent focused on insurance.”
ProNavigator’s platform pairs a proprietary, pre-trained natural language understanding (NLU) engine with a straightforward, conversational interface that allows users to ask questions and look up information across an entire library of digital resources. By retrieving accurate answers instantly and automating workflows, the platform enables ProNavigator’s clients to outperform companies that still rely on legacy approaches to knowledge management. Because the platform learns from each user interaction and every document it analyzes, there is a powerful compounding effect that widens the competitive advantage both for the platform itself and for ProNavigator’s clients.
“No one likes to wait for answers and ProNavigator addresses this industry-wide and costly problem, especially as it relates to enabling sales and broker channel customer service,” said David Nault, General Partner of Luge Capital. “Strong customer demand, a solid value proposition and their proven growth strategy caught our attention. We’re looking forward to fueling their growth with our network, experience and capital to help solve the insurance industry’s information flow challenges.”
Insurance is a complex business that involves many manual processes and elaborate collaboration between insurers and their distribution channels. The accelerated shift to remote workforces coupled with ever-rising customer expectations have resulted in new challenges for the industry.
“We want to empower our broker partners to do what they do best – give great advice,” said Graham Haigh, VP of Business Development for Wawanesa Insurance. “By retrieving accurate answers, instantly, ProNavigator’s solution has been an important enabler of our 100 percent broker-distributed Canadian operating model, adding value for us and our broker partners. That’s why we recently increased our work with ProNavigator, and we look forward to seeing the benefits for us and our broker partners.”
About ProNavigator
ProNavigator provides an AI-based platform, used by some of the largest insurance organizations in North America, to enable insurance companies to save time, provide superior service, and seize revenue opportunities. The platform leverages the latest advancements in artificial intelligence and natural language understanding to instantly, automatically and accurately retrieve answers to questions asked by customers and employees. It includes an intuitive search and retrieval interface built specifically for insurance to answer a broad range of underwriting questions, in natural language, across multiple carriers, products, regions, and documents..
About ProNavigator
The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company, founded in 1896, is the largest Canadian Property and Casualty Mutual insurer with $3.9 billion in annual revenue and assets of $10.5 billion. Wawanesa Mutual, with executive offices in Winnipeg, is the parent company of Wawanesa General, which offers property and casualty insurance in California and Oregon; Wawanesa Life, which provides life insurance products and services throughout Canada; and Western Financial Group, which distributes personal and business insurance across Western Canada. With more than 5,700 employees, Wawanesa proudly serves more than two million policyholders in Canada and the United States. Wawanesa actively gives back to organizations that strengthen communities where it operates, donating well above internationally recognized benchmarks for excellence in corporate philanthropy. For more information, please visit www.wawanesa.com.
About Luge Capital
Luge Capital is a FinTech-focused venture capital fund, investing in early-stage teams shaping the way the world experiences financial services. We invest in fintech and AI solutions applied to financial services and love entrepreneurs challenging the status quo. We work with dedicated teams who are driven to solve real problems that affect people on a global scale. We are an experienced team with value-added investors and a deep industry network to help founders build successful companies. For more information, please visit www.luge.vc.
About GreenSky Capital
GreenSky Capital Inc. is an award-winning Toronto-based firm that makes investments in early-stage Canadian technology companies through its affiliated venture capital funds, GreenSky Accelerator Fund I, II and III. Our principals bring a combination of experience in technology, entrepreneurship, law and finance to high-growth potential companies and dedicated entrepreneurs. For more information, please visit greenskycapital.com.
SOURCE: ProNavigator
Tags: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), funding, InsurTech, MaRS Discovery District, natural language processing (NLP), platform, ProNavigator, seed funding
Read the original article at Insurance-Canada.ca