Zurich-based insurtech startup Riskwolf has announced it has successfully completed its first external funding round. This pre-seed investment was led by SICTIC (Switzerland’s largest and most active business angel network) with participation from angels and professional investors in Europe, in the US and Asia. This round welcomes more than 10 investors from 6 countries across 3 continents into the Riskwolf family.
The world is in the midst of a seismic shift in the way we work, travel and consume, driven by the digitalization of every aspect of our lives. As a result, new, uninsured risks are emerging.
Founded in 2020, Riskwolf is building the technology platform to deliver customized, parametric insurance to fill this significant protection gap and create innovative, untapped markets for the insurance industry. Its highly optimized platform is capable of detecting internet outages, modelling the insurance risks and making payouts in real time.
“Riskwolf was founded at the beginning of 2020 to unlock large, innovative insurance markets built on the newly emerging digital economy risks”, said CEO Thomas Krapf, who co-founded the company with CTO René Papesch. “The idea is to bring parametric insurance to any insurer and give them the capabilities to underwrite internet downtimes and outages on a global scale.”
“SICTIC investors see a huge business opportunity in Riskwolf’s parametric insurance platform as a basis for many innovative insurance offerings. Working with the experienced founders and international team is a pleasure.” said Thomas Dübendorfer, SICTIC President and Lead Investor, representing a strong group of SICTIC’s angel investors.
Jan Kastory, Founding Partner & LP at astorya.vc, a Paris-based InsurTech VC, said: “When claim payouts are pre-agreed, objective and instant, the most ungrateful insurance process suddenly disappears. This is the beauty of parametric insurance. For the underinsured digital economy, the telco and internet outages are only umbrella use cases. Defaulting payment APIs, SaaS companies, telemedicine or e-learning platforms will follow. Riskwolf allows any (re)insurer to enter the space. At astorya.vc, we are convinced by the way Thomas and René have been delivering their vision thus far.”
Riskwolf will use this investment to expand its product line, turbocharge its real-time, data-driven technology platform and accelerate its growth while building out its remote-first team. The team currently has members in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, the UK, Singapore, and India.
James Sanders, Investment Manager at F10, a Zurich based Fin-Tech Incubator and Accelerator, added: “It’s remarkable to see such a competent and focused team graduate from F10’s program and position itself as a global insurTtech player.“
