Fintech Highlights - 11/22/2021

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Pinned to the Top

Reported last week Lemonade will acquire Metromile.

While Lemonade has been at the forefront of using big data and AI in home and pet insurance, Metromile has been trailblazing a parallel path for car insurance. Metromile’s car-mounted precision sensors took over 400 million road trips in recent years, covering billions of miles and sending real-time streams to the Metromile cloud.

These were cross referenced with actual claims data, yielding precise predictions for losses per mile driven. These algorithms hold the promise of propelling Lemonade Car from a newcomer in the car insurance space to its vanguard.

It's an all-stock transaction that implies a fully diluted equity value of approximately $500 million, or just over $200 million net of cash. Under the terms of the transaction, Metromile shareholders will receive Lemonade common shares at a ratio of 19:1.

Read more on the deal, from Lemondade's side of things here ->

P.S. - and some more Lemonade skinny - they somehow snagged a stellar exec from USAA to lead their claims unit - Sean Burgess. Wow.

The BFD

Online stock trading platform Robinhood has confirmed it was hacked last week with more than five million customer email addresses and two million customer names taken, as well as a much smaller set of more specific customer data.

The company said in a blog post that a malicious hacker had socially engineered a customer service representative over the phone November 3 to get access to customer support systems. That allowed the hacker to obtain customer names and email addresses, but also the additional full names, dates of birth and ZIP codes of 310 customers.

Robinhood said that 10 customers had “more extensive account details revealed.” Robinhood did not say what information specifically, though no Social Security numbers, bank account numbers or debit card numbers were exposed and caused no immediate financial loss to customers.

But it’s precisely that kind of information that malicious hackers can use to facilitate further attacks against victims, like targeted phishing emails, since names and dates of birth can often be used to verify a person’s identity.

The company said once it secured its systems the hacker then “demanded an extortion payment.” Robinhood instead notified law enforcement and security firm Mandiant to investigate the breach.

It’s a similar breach to how Twitter was hacked in July 2020. A then-teenage hacker used social engineering techniques to trick some of Twitter’s employees into thinking the hacker was an employee, allowing the hacker access to an internal Twitter “admin” tool, which he used to hijack high-profile accounts and spread a cryptocurrency scam. The attack netted the hacker just over $100,000 in cryptocurrency. In its aftermath, Twitter rolled out security keys to its staff to toughen its defenses against attacks that prevent these kinds of attacks from working in the future.

Whatever lacking security controls that allowed a hacker to trick a Robinhood customer service representative into granting them access to an internal system is a likely focus for its investigation.

Fintechs

Speaking of Robinhood - Say Technologies, an invest-tech startup that give investors a better way to engage with the companies they own, and to give companies tools to better access and understand their investors - is joining Robinhood. More here ->

Payitoff, a NYC-based company building infrastructure to automate and optimize every aspect of debt management -- starting with student loans, raised $8.5M in seed funding. Payitoff is building infrastructure to automate and optimize every aspect of debt management, starting with student loans. The company partners with fintechs, workplace providers and financial institutions to provide them with technology solutions that produce financial outcomes for borrowers. More here ->

Airwallex, an Australian cross-border payments business, raised US$100 million. Airwallex today has around 20,000 customers spanning areas like e-commerce, tech/SaaS companies and professional services. It also has 500 large platform customers (Papaya Global and GOAT are two examples) that have embedded Airwallex’s services within their own services to power transactions for their own customers. More here ->

Settle, a Stateline, Nev.-based cashflow management company, raised $60 million in Series B funding. Settle was founded by Alek Koenig in 2019, after spending four years as head of credit at Affirm, to provide alternative lending to businesses. It combines payments, financing and accounting integrations into one tool so that brands can scale faster. More here ->

nCino acquired SimpleNexus, a Lehi, Utah-based provider of digital homeownership software, for $1.2 billion in cash and stock. nCino is making a push to go direct to consumers via mortgages with its bid. More here ->

Upside Financing, a cash flow management platform with extended payment terms, raised a $10.5 million of seed funding. More here ->

MoonPay, a Miami-based "PayPal for crypto," raised $555 million in first round funding at a $3.4 billion valuation. MoonPay’s fundraising is the latest sign of the mounting interest among big-name investors in crypto-focused financial technology. More here ->

Insuretechs

Steadily, a landlord insurance company for rental properties, announced raising a $31M round. Steadily serves the 17 million individual rental property owners who collectively own the large majority of single family and small apartment rentals across the US. Steadily has built a reputation for making landlord insurance fast, easy, and affordable, which has resulted in rapid growth. More here ->

Covie, a platform that insurance data more accessible and easier to work with, raised $3.4M. More here ->

Kettle, a reinsurance underwriting product to insure insurers, has raised $25M. Kettle that believes it has built a better product — specifically, — to account for catastrophic events by way of better data science. More here ->

From the Stash

What Went Wrong With Zillow? A Real-Estate Algorithm Derailed Its Big Bet — www.wsj.com The company had staked its future growth on Zillow Offers, its business to flip homes using computer-based market predictions. Getting the algorithm right proved to be difficult.

Staples Center Becomes Crypto.com Arena in Name Rights Deal — www.latimes.com The Staples Center will become known as Crypto.com Arena as part of a new 20-year deal between the Singapore cryptocurrency exchange and AEG, owner of the home arena of the Los Angeles Lakers, Clippers, Kings and Sparks.

Making Insurance More Dynamic and Less Reactive — content.11fs.com Benjamin Ensor and David Brear are joined by a panel of guests from MarblePay and TechNation to talk through new business models in Insurtech. What are we…

It's Not the Technology - Why Banking is Broken — content.11fs.com The fundamental flaw within banking at the moment is the way that banking products are treated within the organisation. All banks worked in this way, so…

Canadian Banks Make Big Executive Changes — bankautomationnews.com

This month saw a number of leadership changes at top Canadian banks, spurred in part by the retirements of long-tenured executives. Among those, Toronto-based TD Bank Group on Thursday announced a succession of changes to its senior executive team.

Check: Solving the $150 Billion Payroll Problem — www.readthegeneralist.com Check has the potential to become payroll's "platform of platforms."

Banks Ordered to Promptly Flag Cybersecurity Incidents Under New U.S. Rule — www.reuters.com U.S. banking regulators on Thursday finalized a rule that directs banks to report any major cybersecurity incidents to the government within 36 hours of discovery.

Reports / Webinars

The LiiP with Henri Winand, CEO and Co-Founder, AkinovA — preview.mailerlite.com We had a great conversation this week where Henri and our host Alex Bond discussed all things from the social fabric of the marketplace and enabling risk transfer on a large scale to asking how do we justify long-term innovation when we are rewarded on short-term performance?

Jobs

Stripe - Head of North America Product Support — www.linkedin.com

Stripe is looking for a Head of North America Product Support to lead and grow a strong team of product support specialists and their managers, build relationships with customers internally and externally, and champion our vision of building the best platform for internet commerce.

Blue Cross NC - Director, Strategy & Innovation — www.linkedin.com

Lead strategy and innovation efforts, product ideation, marketing strategy, and large-scale strategic initiatives across the Government markets, focused on accelerating growth and aligning strategic priorities with relevant federal and state agency priorities and long-term plan goals

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