Durham startup Policygenius raises $125M, plans expansion

DURHAM

Policygenius, a New York-based startup with a significant Durham presence, has raised another $125 million to expand its eponymous platform for insurance policy comparisons and management.

The latest investment series brings Policygenius’ total funding to more than $250 million, much of which the company will use to expand its Durham operation.

“We’re on track to keep up aggressive growth,” Jennifer Fitzgerald, CEO and co-founder of Policygenius, said in an interview. “Especially with all the influx of population to the Raleigh-Durham area, folks from the Bay Area and New York relocating there.”

Fitzgerald and her business partner Francois de Lame founded Policygenius in New York about eight years ago. The company hosts a virtual marketplace where customers can compare insurance quotes and policies across a range of insurance types, including life, home, auto and renters. Through its partnerships in the insurance industry, customers can apply and buy policies on Policygenius’ platform.

In 2019, Policygenius opened its second headquarters in downtown Durham with plans to create at least 377 jobs by 2024. The Durham office grew 100% in the last year, Fitzgerald said, now employing more than 200 workers.

“We’ve been really excited about the growth that we’ve seen in our Raleigh-Durham employee base, the quality of talent there,” Fitzgerald said. “We’ve got senior leadership based down there. We’ve been able to hire for every single function from software engineering to product management to product design to operations and finance, so we’ve hired across the board and have just been so impressed.”

Policygenius’ product has primarily catered to consumers, but new capital will help the company expand Policygenius Pro — an offering launched in February for insurance professionals and financial advisers.

“We’ve always been B2C,” Fitzerald said. “Policygenius Pro was the natural extension to that, just taking the software tools and technology and everything that we’ve built internally for B2C business and making that available to independent agents and their clients.”

In the past two years, Policygenius’ no-exam life insurance business has grown 30 times over, the company said in a press release. In 2021 it wrote $40 billion of new life insurance coverage — nearly 70% more than it had in 2019. The company estimates it could be the largest distribution platform for term life insurance in 2022.

“We’re continuing to invest in our Durham location to get there and we’re excited about these next milestones ahead for the company,” Fitzgerald said.