White Star Capital Leads Seyna Series A to Digitize P&C Insurance
By: Matthieu Lattes, General Partner, Pauline Studer, Vice President and Duc Nguyen, Associate at White Star Capital
As the world continues to accelerate, the number of projects emerging and looking for protection keeps increasing. The issue: insurance companies are being held back by outdated technology, which makes building insurance products and protecting customers time-consuming, complex and inflexible.
This shift creates significant insurance gaps. However, it also presents substantial opportunities for P&C (Property & Casualty) insurers that can innovate, serve clients more comprehensively, and capture value across the traditional value chain.
The P&C insurance market is massive and remains one of the few industries that has yet to be disrupted. It represents $1.6 trillion in premiums in the world, or about one-third of the insurance industry. France alone represents a €58 billion market.
One of the most promising, disruptive areas of P&C insurance is digital embedded insurance. By abstracting insurance functionality into technology, embedded insurance enables any third-party provider or developer to integrate innovative insurance products into its customers’ purchase journeys seamlessly, rapidly and at a low cost.
Following a decade in which insurance aggregators and marketplaces saw explosive growth, we expect embedded insurance to be the fastest-growing distribution channel in the decade to come. We estimate that global P&C insurance distribution via embedded digital channels will grow to more than $360 billion in direct written premiums in the next five years. This represents almost 20% of the entire global P&C insurance market.
Enter Seyna
Seeing a massive opportunity, we began evaluating companies and discovered Seyna. Seyna is disrupting the P&C insurance market by leveraging technology to provide custom-made insurance products for brokers, managing general agents (MGAs) and retailers who need more flexibility and responsiveness.
The company’s goal is to be the technology enabler for the whole insurance ecosystem, starting with brokers and reinsurers. Seyna and its clients can create insurance products much quicker through the company’s insurer app and broker app.
The company is one of only four companies to be recognized by the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR) as a French insurer in the 21st century and is the only insurtech to tackle the broker market in France.
Seyna is run by a well-rounded team with both industry experience and entrepreneurial skills in scaling companies to exit. They are well-equipped to break down barriers to entry in an antiquated industry. Seyna also displays extremely impressive KPIs in terms of Gross Written Premium growth and maintaining unit economics above the industry standard.
It’s within this context that we are pleased to announce that we invested in Seyna’s €33 million Series A round alongside Elaia, as well as existing investors Global Founders Capital, Allianz and Financière Saint James. The company will use the investment to launch insurance products dedicated to Health and Life, double down on the broker app and expand to Europe.
White Star Capital is a global multi-stage technology investment platform that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs building ambitious, international businesses. Operating out of Guernsey, New York, London, Paris, Montreal, Toronto, Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong, our presence, perspective, and people enable us to partner closely with our Founders to help them scale internationally from Series A onwards.
