https://www.globaldata.com/store/report/buy-now-pay-later-market-analysis/
BNPL Market
Ascend luggage $30 million Series A: Introduces the Klarna BNPL concept to the insurance sector
Buy-now, pay-later BNPL Market is the trendiest trend in the financial world right now. Investors are pouring billions of dollars into businesses in the industry. According to GlobalData's thematic study, the BNPL sector will be worth $166 billion by 2023. It's hardly unexpected that players in related businesses want to join in on the fun.
Since all you need to be a member of the BNPL market is a solution that postpones payment, it's quite straightforward to capture some of this lightning in a bottle. Businesses are obviously making an effort: Travel firms have promoted their products with "fly now, pay later" alternatives, and SME finance providers have done the same.
Ascend comes into play. The insurtech startup from the United States debuted in January 2021. A year later, it has just completed a $30 million Series A financing. In September, Ascend received a $5.5 million seed investment. It did not provide its valuation to Verdict.
The startup has positioned itself as a solution to revolutionize payments inside the insurance industry, including the implementation of BNPL payments similar to Klarna.
Index Ventures, which has previously invested in UK challenger bank Revolut and food delivery scaleup Deliveroo, led the round.
"Buying business insurance is astonishingly hard - I've witnessed this pain point directly with our investments in firms like Coverwallet, Vouch, Alliance, and Newfront Insurance," explains Index Ventures partner Mark Goldberg.
"Creating a contemporary checkout experience that feels more Shopify and less like filling tax papers is the largest opportunity in the insurance sector today. There is an urgent need for a verticalized and embedded end-to-end payments offering that covers brokers, MGAs, and carriers."
Distributed Ventures, NFP, HSCM Bermuda, XYZ Ventures, and a scattering of strategic angel investors are among the new backers. Existing investors First Round Capital, Susa Ventures, and FirstMark Capital also contributed fresh funds to the firm.
The business also received a $250 million funding commitment to finance insurance premium loans through its platform, which was arranged by Hudson Structured Capital Management, an asset manager specializing in investments in the reinsurance and transportation industries.
An examination of the Ascend BNPL model
Ascend promises to provide a BNPL product that insurers had hitherto been unable to get. It would be simple to dismiss these assertions as a marketing technique devised by Ascend to get attention. Yet, if the Ascend founders are to be believed, there may be something to their BNPL chops.
They believe that Ascend helps the insurance sector to tackle a major problem, which is that most commercial insurers in the United States collect premium payments in an annual lump amount.
"If I'm a truck driver in the United States, for example, my insurance rates can be $10,000 once a year," Ascend cofounder and CEO Andrew Wynn tells Verdict.
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