Newfront, the modern insurance brokerage platform, has announced a $200 million investment at a $2.2 billion valuation led by the Growth Equity business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management and B Capital, with participation from existing investors including Founders Fund and Meritech Capital.
Seattle-based Advanced Professionals Insurance & Benefit Solutions is the wholesale benefits division of Newfront.
“The nature of risk has changed drastically over the past century, but the insurance industry has not modernized to meet these new challenges,” said Newfront Co-Founder and CEO Spike Lipkin. “This investment furthers Newfront’s commitment to building the modern platform for clients, insurance professionals, and trading partners.”
Newfront plans to grow its technology teams and focus in particular on harnessing data-driven insights for clients. The company also plans to invest in specialized client resources and experts across a wide variety of industries and expand across the United States.
The financing serves as further validation of the merger of Newfront and ABD, which occurred in August 2021. In seven months, the company has launched a new client dashboard, refined benchmarking capabilities, welcomed more than 200 new colleagues, and experienced record-breaking growth while achieving profitability.
Kurt de Grosz, Executive Chairman of Newfront, said: “Newfront is the model our industry desperately needs — one that puts clients and colleagues at the centre and where shareholder returns are connected to delivering client value.”
Brian Hetherington, President of Newfront, added: “We are finding that talented brokers and insurance professionals are voting with their feet and leaving 100-year-old platforms to join us in pursuit of a better client and colleague experience. There has never been a better time to join Newfront.”
Gordon Wintrob, Co-Founder and CTO of Newfront remarked: “Our technology teams have spent five years converting pen and paper and systems of record into a system of action that improves the experience for clients, colleagues, and trading partners. Structured data will transform our industry.”
Paul Pate, Vice President within Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said: “We see modern, full-stack platforms transforming large parts of financial services, and we believe Newfront’s marriage of technology, people, and domain expertise represents the future of the insurance industry. We are proud to support Spike, Kurt, Gordon, Brian, and the entire Newfront team as they continue to scale the platform and move the industry forward.”
Matt Levinson, Partner at B Capital, said: “At B Capital, we seek to back generational companies with broad platform potential. Newfront has a unique opportunity to achieve this as the sole modern insurance and benefits broker. Fundamentally, Spike and the team understand that enterprises will always want to work with a human broker, as their needs are nuanced and policies don’t fit a template. What the industry really needs is the ‘bionic broker’ — the most talented brokers in the country powered by the best technology stack. As Newfront continues to build an important distribution channel, we believe they will have opportunities to innovate up and down the insurance stack — across product, capital, claims, and risk management.”
Additional investors in the round include Y Combinator, Index Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, XYZ, Susa Ventures, Pruven, Propel, Vetamer, Altai, Tony Xu CEO of Doordash, and others.
About Newfront
Newfront is transforming the delivery of risk management, employee experience, insurance, and retirement solutions by building a modern insurance platform. Transparent data delivered in real-time translates into a lower total cost of risk and greater insights. Newfront makes insurance work for you. Headquartered in San Francisco, Newfront has offices throughout the country and is home to more than 750 employees who serve clients across the United States and globally. To learn more, visit: newfront.com