A new, Toronto-based startup has set out to address a “quiet inefficiency” it says has been significantly compressing insurance industry margins: “portal hopping.”
“Juggling multiple carrier portals is one of the biggest operational drags on brokerage teams today.”
To compare rates, submit applications, and process claims, insurance brokers must hop between a fragmented ecosystem of carrier portals and manually enter the same information repeatedly. This process takes time and money, and can lead to lost business and data entry errors, DataBraid co-founder and CEO Nick Romano told BetaKit in an exclusive interview.
Enter DataBraid, which announced today $1.9 million USD ($2.7 million CAD) in pre-seed funding from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP)-backed venture studio Koru Ventures to address the problem. The equity round closed in April, and marks the firm’s first financing.
DataBraid’s AI-powered software connects directly with existing broker management systems, eliminating the need for re-entry and multiple log-ins by instantly propagating the information brokers need across carrier portals.
“The platform is essentially a unified broker workspace where [brokers] can operate in one place to do all the things that they need, and then we manage the complexity of connecting to the individual carriers,” Romano said.
Fixing an operational drag
Founded by OTPP, Koru’s mandate is to work with the pension giant’s portfolio companies to create startups that could benefit them. Romano said DataBraid was created in late 2025 following conversations between Koru and OTPP-backed Scoop Insurance Brokers about some of the pain points that Welland, Ontario-based Scoop was facing.
In a statement, Igal Mayer, president and CEO of Scoop and Scoop owner Rates.ca Group, said that “juggling multiple carrier portals is one of the biggest operational drags on brokerage teams today.”
Koru recruited Romano earlier this year to lead the new business, and soon after, he convinced former colleague Atif Khan to join him as co-founder and CTO.
Prior to DataBraid, Romano was the CEO of Deeplite, a Montréal-based startup that built software designed to optimize deep neural networks. Deeplite was acquired last year by Swiss semiconductor giant STMicroelectronics for an undisclosed sum, and Romano said that experience gave him “a deep education in what AI can do.”
RELATED: Deeplite raises $7.5 million CAD seed round to optimize deep neural networks
Romano and Khan have worked together before, crossing paths at Toronto-based Messagepoint, which Romano co-founded and Khan helped lead. Messagepoint began as a professional services firm before evolving into an AI-powered customer communications software company.
DataBraid marries Romano and Khan’s track record in AI and enterprise software. Scoop, which has nearly 300 insurance brokers—100 of which focus on policy servicing—has been the startup’s pilot brokerage. “They’re very supportive,” Romano said. “They know the problem.”
DataBraid plans to use this funding to add some engineers to its six-person team, deepen its carrier and broker integrations, and advance early customer deployments in Ontario.
Feature image courtesy DataBraid.