Ascend: Elevating Modern Insurance Payment Offerings
When we first met Andrew and Praveen in March of 2021 through our good friend Courtney Buie Lipkin, they were at the beginning of their founding journey. They had landed on the idea to build a new payments infrastructure company in the insurance space. From the speed of money movement to the lack of modern financing options, there was clearly room to start a company to address these needs.
We’re passionate about the formation stage of company building – that’s when doing the work can have the greatest impact. An idea can quickly become an insight, and a driven team can capitalize on that insight at full speed. That’s why we’ve loved having a ringside seat to the work Andrew and Praveen have done building Ascend since they first conceived of modernizing insurance payments.
After we met, the team here at XYZ immediately got to work delving into the world of insurance payments. It was clear from our diligence with financial infrastructure experts that what Andrew and Praveen were going after, an end-to-end insurance payments experience, had been completely tech-forgotten – a hallmark quality we look for in an investment at XYZ. Through that work, we introduced Ascend to their second employee, Nick Rockwell, who was brought on as Head of Operations and Growth. We also connected the team to another good friend Courtney Leimkulher (Founding Partner at Springbank Collective and former CFO of Marsh) who later on joined as an angel investor as well. Consensus was that there was something meaningful to build here, and Andrew and Praveen were the right team to do it.
That’s why we’re excited to announce their $30M Series A led by Index Ventures with participation from us and our good friends over at Susa Ventures, First Round Capital, and FirstMark Capital. This will bring their funding total to $39M along with a $250M lending commitment facilitated by Hudson Structured Capital Management Ltd. This will enable the Ascend team to meet the enormous demand to provide products that facilitate operational processes for brokerages, MGAs, and carriers, such as embedded payments and buy-now-pay-later offerings. Not only does this accelerate the sale of policies for these players, but it also provides customers with a transformationally better online purchase experience. Ascend’s products are clearly being built with the insight that selling and buying commercial insurance doesn’t have to be painful. Everyone can win and go faster.
Acend is now operating nationally in all 50 states with leading customers like Vouch, Newfront, among others. If you’re looking to join an industry transforming team, learn more here: LinkedIn, Twitter,or check out https://useascend.com/.
