Inclined announces $15m funding round
Inclined Technologies, a financial technology company that aims to “democratise” a $150 billion market by helping consumers to significantly enhance the value of their life insurance policies, has closed on a $15 million Series A funding round. HSCM Ventures led the round, with participation from Anthemis Group as well as several new and existing investors.
Inclined is a SaaS software company focused on driving better long term outcomes for whole life policyholders. HSCM Ventures is the venture capital arm of Hudson Structured Capital Management, doing its re/insurance business as HSCM Bermuda.
Inclined’s “first-of-its-kind” platform addresses two inherent problems with the way the market currently operates–the “front end” problem of obtaining and structuring the raw data from whole life carriers, and the “back end” problem of efficiently managing the collateral in a way that can deliver assets at scale to our financial institution partners.
Inclined’s initial focus is to work with whole life advisors to offer policyholders a secured, revolving line of credit collateralised by the cash value in their whole life policy, within a fully automated experience. The Inclined Line of Credit (iLOC) is flexible in that it can be drawn or paid back iteratively at the convenience of the borrower. The borrower never pays any fees on the Inclined platform, and the process of applying for a loan takes less than 15 minutes.
There is about $150 billion borrowed against whole life policies today in ways that are inefficient, resulting in suboptimal compounding of the cash value and ultimate death benefit of these policies, Inclined said.
It added that Inclined helps policyholders realise more value out of their whole life investment by giving them quick and efficient access to the equity they have built in their whole life policy.
Inclined’s chief executive officer and co-founder Joshua Wyss said: “We are excited to partner with HSCM Ventures and the rest of our investors to tackle the $1 trillion opportunity in whole life cash value access. With this capital, we will continue to improve the way people access the equity they have built in their whole life policy, while serving as a trusted technology partner to whole life carriers and financial institutions across the US. This is a market that has yet to benefit from modern technology.”
Vikas Singhal, partner at HSCM Ventures, will be joining the Inclined board of directors.
He said: “Inclined is engaging carriers, policyholders and lenders in a very aligned and coordinated manner and we see policy loan refinancing as just the beginning of what can be unlocked through those integrated relationships.”
As Inclined experiences an increased demand for its technology, the funds will also be used for investments into its marketing and business development teams, and evaluating tangential opportunities for expansion.
