Corvus Insurance scores mega-round to tackle rising cyber risks

The US-based insurtech raised $100 million in Series C funding at a $750 million valuation, per its press release. Founded in 2017, Corvus Insurance leverages AI to help insurers underwrite commercial insurance coverage against cyber risks. Additionally, its digital platform, CrowBar, helps brokers manage cyberclaims. The insurtech will use the funding to enhance its data science and underwriting, as well as to develop new products.

Corvus is using AI to more accurately assess cyber risks, which has traditionally been challenging for insurers. Only 26% of incumbents in key global markets offer standalone cyberpolicies. Most cyber insurance is bundled into other policies, such as property and liability, as it is too difficult to define and scope cyber risk alone: Businesses are constantly changing and upgrading how they apply technology, making it challenging for traditional underwriting to keep pace with their risk exposure. Corvus aims to solve this by using AI and proprietary sets of data to analyze a company’s IT and software in more depth, helping it identify risks to price policies. As a result, the insurtech had a record year in 2020, growing its gross written premium 250% year over year to write 10,000 policies and reaching $120 million in annual premium run rate.

Corvus’ mega-round further underscores cyber risk as a key growth area within insurtech going forward. Incumbent insurers will look to improve their cyber risk underwriting capabilities to better protect clients and reduce potential high claims from inadequate risk assessment. With the rate of cybercrime accelerating further this year, incumbents are already turning to smart data solutions: Allianz and Munich Re have partnered with Google’s data expertise to simplify the risk assessment of corporate cyber insurance, for example. Incumbents’ need for accurate cyber risk assessment will likely unlock partnership opportunities for the likes of Corvus and generate more mega-rounds this year: Multimillion-dollar venture funds have previously stated that they’ll put some focus on this fast-growing area.