Flood insurtech
Neptune was founded in 2017 and uses an AI engine to underwrite flood insurance. Jumpstart launched the next year, using integrations with USGS data to identify policyholders in earthquake-affected areas and deliver a payment for their short-term expenses. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but both companies will keep their employees and offices in place.
Trevor Burgess, Neptune Flood CEO, said he and Jumpstart founder Kate Stillwell were introduced by a mutual friend and discovered over the years that they shared goals around using insurtech to provide more effective cover for rapidly evolving risks to more of the population.
“Neptune had built a good distribution network, had established some good capacity relationships and had built a technology platform that had a lot of API links into distribution. And we thought if we work together, there may be a way that we can help bring not just Neptune's flood product, but parametric in general to be distributed much more broadly,” he says. “Five or 10 years from now, I'll be really proud if the combined Neptune-Jumpstart effort is thinking about what are the perils that cause economic insecurity across the economic spectrum, and how can we use insurance products, both indemnity and parametric, to help individuals manage those risks.”
Jumpstart remains available in California, Oregon, and Washington at jumpstartinsurance.com during the transition. Soon, it will be folded into Neptune’s Agent Portal.
“I think there's so much potential for the insurance industry to fulfill its social justice mission of lifting all boats and providing financial disaster stimulus in any time of hardship,” Stillwell says. “Parametric kind of helps fulfill that mission in a more obvious way. Our joint ambition to become the biggest parametric company and to continue growing.”
