Vancouver-based insurance tech startup Owl.co has raised $30 million in its Series B funding round led by Cota Capital. Other participating investors include Sorenson Ventures, FUSE, Impression Ventures, Luge Capital, and Plug and Play Ventures.
Launched in 2018, Owl has developed an AI-enabled end-to-end encrypted platform that helps banks and insurance companies handle critical processes around customer data collection. The startup claims its insurance claims monitoring tech finds five times more fraudulent cases than other solutions.
Owl was founded by Sean Merat and Vahid Mirjalili, as well as Sean’s brother Sohrab Merat, currently chief product officer. Sean told BetaKit that the idea for the company came out of the desire to improve processes for highly regulated industries like finance and insurance.
The startup said that it doesn’t use claimant data such as age, gender, neighbourhood stats, or race in its models to determine eligibility in insurance fraud. Its platform automatically detects significant losses from malingering, exaggerated, or non-eligible claims.
Backed with fresh financing, Owl intends to use the $30 million to scale its current offerings and expand its full-time staff in the United States and Canada by 20 percent before the end of the year. According to Owl, the Series B round brings its total funding to $40 million to date.
RELATED: Owl.co raises $2.6 million CAD for encrypted data collection platform
In August 2019, Owl secured $2.6 million CAD in its seed round led by two FinTech-focused firms, Luge Capital and Impression Ventures. The round also saw participation from San Francisco-based Sway Ventures, Inovia Capital, Plug and Play, and Builders VC, the latter a US-based firm focused on “modernizing antiquated industries.”
Mirjalili told BetaKit that a turning point for the company was being named one of the winners of Finance Montréal’s FinTech Startup Pitch Contest (and receiving $25,000), in October 2019.
The company also received $4.5 million CAD from Canada’s federal government as part of the Innovation Superclusters Initiative in 2020.
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