Montréal-based Inscora has closed $2 million CAD in pre-seed funding to bring its automated risk assessment and sales software for cyber insurance brokers to market.
Led by former Delve Laboratories and Dialogue leaders, Inscora is developing a platform to help cyber insurance brokers assess businesses’ cyber risk, sell policies more efficiently, and improve their clients’ security postures. “We call it value-added cyber insurance,” Inscora co-founder and CEO Gabriel Tremblay told BetaKit in an interview.
With its solution, Inscora hopes to help brokers offer better risk-adjusted premiums and convert more leads into sales. The insurtech startup will use this capital to finish building its product, with plans to roll it out in Canada and the United States by the end of 2024. Inscora has already grown its workforce from three to six people, and expects to add some more employees to support this strategy.
“We’re one of the few companies that has the kind of cybersecurity risk assessment background that we have.”
Inscora’s pre-seed round, which closed in February, marks the startup’s first external funding to date. The all-equity financing was led by FinTech-focused Luge Capital with support from a slew of other Québec-based investors including Desjardins Capital (which previously invested in Delve), Accelia Capital, and Inovia Capital, as well as undisclosed angels from the cybersecurity sector. Tremblay declined to disclose Inscora’s valuation.
“The process of buying cyber insurance is not easy,” Luge principal Laviva Mazhar told BetaKit. “Businesses have to answer very granular questions about their cyber posture and amount of sensitive data within their organization. It often involves consultation with a broker [and] weeks of evaluating the [cybersecurity] posture of a company, and there is no guarantee that the information collected is accurate. Inscora is helping make this process easier for all parties involved, while enabling brokers to help their clients better protect themselves.”
Inscora was founded in 2023 by Tremblay, CPO Pierre-David Oriol, and CTO Guillaume Raymond. Tremblay is a repeat cybersecurity entrepreneur: before Inscora, he launched and led Montréal-based, venture-backed Delve—which used artificial intelligence to reprioritize the remediation of software vulnerabilities—until its sale to Dell-owned American cybersecurity firm Secureworks in 2020 for an undisclosed amount.
Oriol previously worked alongside Tremblay as Delve’s vice president of product, while Raymond was formerly director of engineering at Montréal healthtech company Dialogue. According to Tremblay, the trio brings a range of complementary capabilities to Inscora, from his own business-focused mindset to Oriol’s product-building capacity and Raymond’s team-building and people management skills.
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During their time at Delve, Tremblay said that he and Oriol developed some expertise with cyber risk assessments. The pair stayed at Secureworks for two-and-a-half years post-acquisition before returning to the startup world to launch Inscora.
This cybersecurity background helped convince Luge to invest in Inscora, Mazhar noted. “As an investment firm focused on FinTech and insurtech, we are looking forward to supporting them in the insurance industry,” she said.
Tremblay said Inscora began developing its product two years ago, speaking with over 100 cyber brokers since then to ensure it will meet the industry’s needs. He said the insurtech startup now has a functional version of its offering, which it is currently working with undisclosed insurance industry partners to refine.
“The founders at Inscora have an innovative take on helping facilitate the sales and underwriting of cyber insurance, a market that has been growing fast amidst heightened cyber threats and increasing number of cyber incidents,” Mazhar said. “Their approach not only helps brokers and insurers with distribution and underwriting, but also helps end clients better protect themselves and improve their cyber postures.”
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According to Tremblay, cyber insurance used to be a tougher sell. But as cyber attacks have become more common and the cost of contending with them has risen, more insurers have begun offering it to clients, and more companies have been purchasing it to protect themselves, often at the behest of their investors or partners.
“Even as we speak today, the industry is really shallow in the way they do their analysis, so there’s a lot of room to improve on a lot of fronts—both the insurer, the broker, [and] the client,” Tremblay said.
Tremblay noted that the cyber insurance tech space has become increasingly competitive as the overall market has grown, and today features some large companies and a mix of other young startups. He is betting that Inscora’s background in cybersecurity will prove beneficial.
“We really want to become a major player in the cyber insurance sector, at least in North America,” Tremblay said. “We’re one of the few companies that has the kind of cybersecurity risk assessment background that we have. We really want to use that to carve a space in the market for ourselves.”
UPDATE (08/06/24): This story has been updated to include commentary from Luge Capital principal Laviva Mazhar.
Feature image courtesy Inscora.