Regional insurtech Igloo raises $19m in Cathay-led Series B round

Regional insurtech firm Igloo announced that it has raised $19 million in Series B funding led by Cathay Innovation, a global venture capital firm, with participation from ACA and other existing investors including Openspace.

This brings Igloo’s total fundraising to over $36 million.

With its Series B raise, Igloo plans to drive product innovation cementing itself as one of the region’s leading insurtech firms. Igloo will continue to invest in reinforcing its full-stack capabilities, along with innovating its dynamic risk assessment and AI-powered claims assessment tools.

In line with Igloo’s vision of ‘Insurance for All’, Igloo’s product development and distribution focus will be further targeting the underinsured low to mid-income population segments in Southeast Asia.

It is building scalable and interoperable technological capabilities to be offered to Igloo’s insurance partners via an open platform. In addition to technology innovation, usage of funds will also focus on acquiring intermediary assets which bring synergies to Igloo’s business model.

“At Cathay we are firm believers in financial access and inclusion for Southeast Asia and so Igloo’s mission is one which deeply resonates with us on many levels. We have been honoured to be part of the journey, witnessing Raunak and the team build from strength to strength, expanding regionally at breakneck speed all while navigating COVID. We are incredibly excited for what is to come next for the team at Igloo.” said Rajive Keshup, Director for Cathay Innovation in Southeast Asia and board member.

Igloo also announced the promotion of Raunak Mehta, previously Chief Commercial Officer as its new Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He will work alongside co-founder of Igloo, Wei Zhu, who is on the company’s board of directors.

Raunak has extensive experience in the e-commerce and technology space, having held leadership roles at Asia’s biggest e-commerce brands Flipkart and Zalora.

Since joining Igloo in 2018, he has spearheaded its market entry into The Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and Malaysia. while establishing partnerships with industry leaders such as Lazada, Shopee, Bukalapak, AIS, RedDoorz, foodpanda, Lotte Finance and Ahamove across a range of insurance products.

Igloo has continued to expand in a tough macro environment, nearly tripling its Gross Written Premium facilitation in 2021.

With more than 30 marquee partnerships and an ever-increasing regional footprint, Igloo is on track to achieve its goal of facilitating five percent of General Insurance Premiums in the region over the next five years. In 2021 alone, Igloo’s insurance solutions helped underwrite over 75 million policies in Southeast Asia.