Insurance startup Urban Jungle announced a £2.5 million seed funding round today with participation from a range of new and existing high profile Angel investors, including Rob Devey, ex CEO of Prudential UK, and Simon Rogerson, CEO of Octopus Group.
With the InsurTech space hotting up, Urban Jungle is challenging the status-quo of traditional insurance providers to cater for the growing number of UK renters who have historically been underserved by the industry. Innovations such as a pay-as-you-go policy, a commitment to transparent pricing and modern policy terms have helped make Urban Jungle one of the top-rated UK home insurers, currently rated 9.6/10 on Trustpilot.
Since its inception in 2016 and with the support of pre-seed funding from its Angels, Urban Jungle has rapidly scaled and established itself as a leading brand in the rental insurance market. The startup has created a suite of products and grown its customer base to more than 15,000.
The Urban Jungle platform has been designed from scratch specifically with renters in mind. In its quest to make insurance easier to navigate, Urban Jungle have been working closely with underwriters to remove many of the legacy home-owner questions renters are asked when taking out a policy, making it easier to understand and better suited to today’s ‘Generation Rent’.
The platform has also been built with ease of integration in mind, making Urban Jungle well placed to easily partner with the wave of new agile FinTech services, and keeping them ahead of the competition who are struggling to keep up with the pace and scale needed in the industry.
Hot off the launch of its new contents policy which offers flexible and affordable cover for just £5 per month, Urban Jungle has grand plans for its £2.5m funding. As specialists in renters, the startup intends to stay with its customers as they grow and experience new life-stages – many of which will happen while they’re still renting – this means expanding their insurance product offering further.
CEO Jimmy Williams commented:
“I’m immensely proud of what the team has achieved since our last funding round. We’ve ticked off everything we set out to do, and more, as well as bringing in some amazing people to lead us into the next stage. There’s still so much about the insurance industry that we want to fix, and this funding will allow us to accelerate the pace at which we do that.”
Lead investor, Rob Devey, said:
“I’m very pleased to continue supporting Urban Jungle. Greg and Jimmy have done a great job at growing the business by collecting the best talent around them, building some outstanding partnerships and consistently executing on their strategy. It is very exciting to be involved in the next phase of the company’s growth.”
Alongside the funding round, Urban Jungle also announced a number of new senior hires, including new Director of Strategy & Operations, Helen Hodges, a former Director at BBC Studios, and Lauren McAloon as Head of Marketing, who formerly headed up global customer acquisition at Clearscore.
