A digital insurance start-up offering a range of insurance products to ‘generation rent’ has raise £2.5m in a seed funding round.
Urban Jungle offers contents insurance, gadget insurance and tenants liability policies, including for customers in house- and flat-shares.
Described as a start-up ‘challenging traditional insurance providers’, it caters for UK renters who have historically ‘been underserved’ by the insurance industry.
The start-up works closely with underwriters to remove many of the legacy home-owner questions renters are asked when taking out a policy, making it easier to understand and better suited to today’s ‘Generation Rent’.
The start-up’s funds were said to be backed by a mixture of new and previous investors, including Rob Devey, ex CEO of Prudential UK, and Simon Rogerson, CEO of Octopus Group.
The start-up said it plans to use the investment to expand its insurance product offering further.
“I’m immensely proud of what the team has achieved since our last funding round,” said CEO Jimmy Williams.
“We’ve ticked off everything we set out to do, and more, as well as bringing in some amazing people to lead us into the next stage.
“There’s still so much about the insurance industry that we want to fix, and this funding will allow us to accelerate the pace at which we do that.”
Lead investor, Rob Devey, added: “I’m very pleased to continue supporting Urban Jungle. Greg and Jimmy have done a great job at growing the business by collecting the best talent around them, building some outstanding partnerships and consistently executing on their strategy.
“It is very exciting to be involved in the next phase of the company’s growth.”
Alongside the funding round, Urban Jungle also announced a number of new senior hires, including new Director of Strategy & Operations, Helen Hodges, a former Director at BBC Studios, and Lauren McAloon as Head of Marketing, who formerly headed up global customer acquisition at Clearscore.