Insurance data analytics platform Planck raises $16 million Series B

Planck, an AI-based data platform for insurance underwriting, has raised a $16 million Series B led by Team8 Capital. The New York-based startup anticipates that clients will need to handle an influx of insurance requests as businesses adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic.

All of the Planck's existing investors — Viola FinTech, Arbor Ventures and Eight Roads — also participated, while Nationwide and Hannover Digital Investments joined as strategic investors.

Planck provides large insurance companies with data analytics and though it doesn’t disclose its exact number of customers, co-founder and CEO Elad Tsur told TechCrunch it currently works with "dozens of commercial insurance companies in the U.S., and among them are more than half of the top-30 insurers." Clients include Chubb, Great American Insurance Group’s Republic Indemnity and AIG’s Attune.

Planck provides insurance-related data analytics for more than 50 major business segments, including restaurants, construction and manufacturing, and insurance lines, like workers compensation and general liability.

Its platform’s ability to provide real-time insights means it can help insurance providers keep up with increased inquiries during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsur said. For example, Planck anticipates higher levels of submissions as business owners who need to cut costs shop around for less costly policies. On the renewal side, businesses are also making major changes to their operations, including the types of services they offer, or seeking additional coverage. This means insurance carriers are dealing with more volume at a time when many of their employees are still working from home.

Planck draws on a large range of sources for data, including online images, text, videos, reviews and public records, to generate risk-related insights for a business using its name and address.

"Take a healthcare business as an example. Planck will return simple insights such as having an ER operations, and well as more complex insights such as the type of NIV equipment, opioids and type of surgeries performed in the business," said Tsur.

Planck was launched in 2016 by Tsur and Cohen, co-founders of data mining startup BlueTail, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2012 and rebranded as Salesforce Einstein, and David Schapiro, former CEO of banking and insurance pricing SaaS company Earnix . The company’s Series B brings its total raised so far to $28 million. The new funding is earmarked for global expansion, starting with Germany next year.

Tsur said the company picked Germany because it "is one of the largest commercial insurance markets in the world, and has a very open and innovative state of mind. We also wish to demonstrate our strength and capabilities in non-English speaking countries, as our AI platform was built to be language agnostic, and prepare for further global expansion."