Modern life insurance startup Ethos recently announced they’ve raised $35 million in a Series B round of funding.
The company’s method of providing online and mobile sales channels provided by the Lincoln, Neb.-based life insurance company, Assurity Life, seems to be working as this amount has significantly increased since their Series A round of $11.5 million.
The previous round came from Will Smith’s Smith Family Circle; Robert Downey Jr.’s Downey Ventures; Kevin Durant’s Durant Company; Arrive, a subsidiary of Jay Z’s Roc Nation; and leading Silicon Valley investment firm Sequoia Capital.
The new investment from Google Ventures (GV) and returning investors, Sequoia Capital and Arrive, was led by Accel Partners.
Accel’s Nate Niparko will join the Ethos board of directors and GV General Partner, Tyson Clark, will join as an advisor.
The non-commission-based insurance company prides itself on being a more equitable provider by offering term life insurance that only requires payment for a fixed period of time.
“They’ll often convince people they need permanent life insurance. And they’ll give you a bait and switch price that less than 10% of people qualify for,” said the chief executive officer, Peter Colis, in an interview with Crunchbase News.
Depending on the customer’s preferences and population data, Ethos can offer a life insurance policy and price in just about 10 minutes based on their information.
“We’re processing thousands of apps and customers,” said Colis.
Colis and his co-founder Lingke Wang also started a company which created a secondary marketplace for policyholders where they could cash out of their policies by putting them on the market for purchase.
Ethos managed to score a debt round from Silicon Valley Bank as well.
