Impact Investing | October 30, 2018

Jay Z-backed Ethos raises $35 million to simplify access to life insurance

Jessica Pothering
ImpactAlpha Editor

Jessica Pothering

ImpactAlpha, October 30 – The San Francisco insurance tech company raised its Series B round led by venture capital firm Accel. Prior investors, including Jay Z’s venture capital firm Arrive, GV (previously Google Venture), and Sequoia Capital, also backed the round. The firm also raised an undisclosed amount of debt capital from Silicon Valley Bank.

Ethos operates an online platform to sell life insurance policies by life insurance company Assurity Life. Unlike most life insurance policies, where policy holders have to pay premiums indefinitely, the policies available through Ethos are term-life policies, which means policy holders only have to pay for a fixed period of time. The policies Ethos offers are therefore less expensive.

Applicants using Ethos platform can also be approved online in as little as 10 minutes. Most applications don’t require follow up medical exams as many other life policies do.

The company has raised $46 million since launching in 2016, TechCrunch reports.