Urban Jungle raises £16.5m for home insurance expansion

Insurtech startup Urban Jungle has raised £16.5 million in its latest series A funding round to rapidly scale its UK home insurance business for renters and homeowners as well as add new markets.

Intact Ventures, a North American-based venture capital investor, led the funding round, alongside an investment from Ingka Group, the world’s largest IKEA franchise, and participation from existing investors.

Jimmy Williams, co-founder and chief executive officer at Urban Jungle, commented: “This latest Series A funding round comes at an exciting time, we’re growing very quickly which has been attractive to both existing and new investors.”

This series A round brings the total amount raised by Urban Jungle to £32 million.

Urban Jungle, which claims its use of insurtech drives down costs such as fraud and enables it to offer competitively priced insurance policies, is among the UK’s top-rated providers, reaching the recent milestone of helping more than 100,000 customers while still scoring 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot with 5,000+ reviews.

Williams said: “We are building a modern insurance provider from scratch, leveraging the latest technology, and using that to create products with fair, transparent prices and easy to understand terms – all whilst making insurance simple, quick and affordable.”

He continued: “Fraud is a big problem in our industry, and it drives up the cost for everyone else. The way we use technology gives us a critical edge by being able to screen out fraudsters, and help genuine customers get a much better deal, which is particularly important at the moment. It also helps us with our goal of financial inclusion—being able to tell fraudsters and genuine customers apart helps us have much higher eligibility than our peers.”

Image: Canva

Mark Dugdale