We’re delighted to announce our newest investment in TrustLayer’s $15M Series A led by Craft Ventures, with participation from Abstract Ventures, BoxGroup, NFP and Propel Venture Partners. Nine Four Ventures is excited to partner with John and the TrustLayer team to build a category-defining insurance verification software platform. Here is a bit more about the business, opportunity, and why we invested.
TrustLayer is an insurance verification software platform for firms to request, verify, and monitor proof of insurance, licenses, and compliance from brokers on behalf of counterparties. TrustLayer’s goal is to transition customers from manual, paper-based processes, to a cloud-based system of record that improves transparency and reduces the traditional costs, time, and overhead typically required to check proof of coverage and protect against unknown financial and reputational risks.
TrustLayer was born out of John’s first-hand experience seeing the difficulty associated with establishing counter-party trust on both a business and personal level while investing capital across emerging markets and managing renovations on investment properties. The lack of transparency, number of human errors, and prevalence of “shadow costs” were expensive and made it difficult to make decisions, which slowed down projects. John knew there had to be a better way. That’s when he left his job to start TrustLayer.
The moment we met John it immediately became clear that the business was addressing an overlooked and underestimated pain point in a slow moving, global, trillion-dollar market that operates offline. In an increasingly competitive market, speed to fixing an asset or winning a bid makes all the difference in the world. There are also customer expectations to meet: landlords and tenants expect problems to be fixed ‘now’ but the manual, offline process of requesting, verifying, and monitoring third party vendor certificates of insurance unnecessarily slows things down. The current paradigm negatively impacts tenant satisfaction which subsequently impacts future renewals and potential referrals. On the other side of the problem, it also inadvertently makes it challenging for some vendors to bid on or win new jobs. By integrating with brokers, TrustLayer offers a centralized source of truth that provides a seamless coordination experience between owners and vendors expediting turnaround times without sacrificing risk exposure and benefitting all stakeholders.
Over the last three years, TrustLayer patiently built their leading insurance verification software platform. Their methodical approach laid the groundwork for a robust product roadmap including renewal COI automation for vendors, underwriting and loss control tools for owners, and new placement lead generation for insurers. TrustLayer’s goal is to increase wallet share and reduce churn by enabling owners, brokerages, vendors, and insurers to work seamlessly together and become more engrained within each stakeholder’s daily workflow. It will be exciting to watch how the business unfolds, and fun to plug in our broader network comprised of owners, service providers, and insurers as TrustLayer continues to address this global problem by growing internationally and expanding beyond commercial product lines.
We’ve spent a lot of time trying to identify where the venture-backable opportunities are in the insurance spaces that impact our LPs and network most meaningfully, and things clicked for us when we met John. The practical solutions and broader vision of digitizing insurance, making it cheaper, more efficient, and ultimately ensuring that adequate risk controls are in place resonated with us. We’re also excited about the growth paths forward and strategic direction the company is taking.
Congrats again to John and the entire team. We’re just getting started!
