Marshmallow, a London-based startup that is building a digital insurance company for migrant people, has raised $1.2m.
The capital, which came from Passion Capital, Investec Bank, and a number of angel investors, will be used to launch a digital car insurance product for foreign born drivers.
Founded in 2017, Marshmallow was created by twin brothers Oliver & Alexander Kent-Braham alongside CTO David Goate. The platform, which is set to launch later this year, aggregates global data which when exposed to a proprietary algorithm offers foreign drivers better, more accurate, prices.
According to Marshmallow, insurers use a one size fits all approach and it unfairly treats people who weren’t born in the UK. They cite that the average foreign-born driver can expect to be quoted prices that are 51% higher than UK born drivers – an increase of £300.
Oliver said the team has ‘complete conviction that being born outside of the United Kingdom doesn’t make you a worse driver than somebody born anywhere else in the world and that it is the added complexity of underwriting a foreign born driver that leads to the huge price increase.’
Marshmallow has gained FCA approval and counts insurance veteran Tom Holliday, a former Zurich Chief Underwriting Officer, as part of its team.
Last year, Monese, a London-based mobile banking startup aimed at migrants, picked up $10m in Series A financing. The app-only bank allows users to open a bank a UK bank account regardless of their citizenship.
The account can be opened simply by taking a selfie and a picture of their passport or national identity card.
While earlier this month, Nova Credit, a San Francisco-based consumer reporting company, closed its Series A financing round on $16m. Co-founded by Misha Esipov, Nicky Goulimis and Loek Janssen as a graduate research project at Stanford University in 2015, Nova Credit is a cross-border credit reporting agency aiming to solve the problem of credit access for immigrants.
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