The buy now, pay later BNPL market is expected to hit $680B in transaction value by 2025. The meteoric increase in e-commerce purchases exacerbated by the pandemic fueled much of the recent growth. With digital adoption permeating into other industries, BNPL solutions are following. Ascend is an end-to-end payments platform for insurance payments that allows insurance businesses to offer flexible payment solutions to their customers. The company offers payment APIs and a no-code platform that’s easily embedded by insurance sellers into their existing tech stacks to automate the entire checkout and post-checkout experience. Ascend handles commission distributions as well as carrier payments. The company’s platform is in use in all 50 states, servicing customers like Vouch, Cowbell, Newfront, Boost Insurance, NFP, LuckyTruck, Rogue Risk, Portal Insurance, and Riskwell.
AlleyWatch caught up with Ascend Cofounder Andrew Wynn to learn more about the inspiration for the business, how Ascend is modernizing the insurance checkout and payment experience, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the total equity unding raised to $35.5M, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised $30M in Series A funding led by Index Ventures and included new investors like Distributed Ventures and its anchor limited partner NFP, HSCM Bermuda, XYZ Ventures, and a group of strategic angel investors. Existing investors First Round Capital, Susa Ventures, and FirstMark Capital also participated.
We also secured $250M in lending to finance insurance premium loans by Hudson Structured Capital Management (HSCM Bermuda).
Tell us about the product or service that Ascend offers.
Ascend is the first modern insurance payments platform that provides automated, all-in-one financing, collections, and payables.
What inspired the start of Ascend?
At our previous company Sheltr, we witnessed firsthand how insurance sellers struggled with the customer payments experience due to outdated systems and processes. Praveen and I started Ascend to fix this pain point for insurance sellers as well as customers.
How is Ascend different?
Ascend puts user experience top of mind for all parties in the insurance payments process. For insurance customers, we provide an easy-to-use purchase flow with flexible payment options. For our insurance sellers, we are a single paperless solution that handles financing, collections, and payables.
What market does Ascend target and how big is it?
Ascend focuses on the commercial insurance market which was valued at $692.33 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $1,613.34 billion by 2030.
What’s your business model?
We are completely free for insurance sellers to use and our model is based on collecting transaction fees to process payments as well interest on financed payments.
What are your post-COVID office plans??
We are growing quickly, expanding our team by making additional new hires, and encouraging our team to take a hybrid work presence in our New York and California offices.
What was the funding process like?
We saw a very positive response to our product with the market. Originally, we wanted to secure additional debt financing for our buy now, pay later option to lend but these conversations inevitably led to discussions about raising a new round.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Fundraising takes so much time and energy out of you as a founder! It’s a challenge mentally and physically. Moreover, it comes at an opportunity cost to the business – when you are fundraising you can’t spend time working on all the other critical functions like sales, hiring, and product development.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
We’ve seen a lot of traction across several segments in the insurance space including insurtech but have been surprised by the large amount of interest among independent agents who want to allow their customers to pay and finance insurance how they prefer while not having to deal with any of the paperwork and operational headaches.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Our main goals are to continue to add to the product based on our customer feedback in order to grow both the number of customers and premiums processed with Ascend as well as growing the team to support the customer growth – we’re currently hiring in San Francisco, Columbus, and New York across all roles.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
A fresh injection of capital is neither a marker of, nor a surefire way to, success. Keep building your product by listening to your customers and solving their meaningful problems. Once you’re solving people’s problems in a real way then go out and find financial backers who share the same interests.
A fresh injection of capital is neither a marker of, nor a surefire way to, success. Keep building your product by listening to your customers and solving their meaningful problems. Once you’re solving people’s problems in a real way then go out and find financial backers who share the same interests.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We believe that Ascend will become the go-to payments solution for all independent agents across the country.
What’s your favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC?
Vol de Nuit on West 4th. It’s not really a restaurant (all they have is Belgian beer and fries) and it’s not really outdoors (just a little courtyard area) but it’s a great spot that I’ve been going to since interning in NY in 2010.
