Foresight Group (San Francisco), an insurer of high-hazard clients has announced its completion of a $39 million Series B Round for its Foresight technology-based workers’ compensation program, led by OMERS Ventures (Toronto). The round included participation by new entrants Digital Garage Ventures and the George Kaiser Family Foundation, and continuing participation by Brick and Mortar Ventures and Builders VC, bringing the total raised to date to $59 million.
Foresight Group describes Foresight as the first workers compensation InsurTech to focus on the middle market, and Safesite, a risk management platform. Together, Foresight and Safesite tie safety engagement to insurance savings, removing cost as a prohibitor for businesses on a journey toward eliminating workplace accidents. Foresight reports that it has demonstrated a reduction in the frequency of policyholders’ workplace safety incidents by an average of 31 percent.
“From securing appointments with 13 of the top 15 property and casualty brokers in the U.S., to bringing nearly $1 billion in submissions in the door, to attracting and retaining top industry talent, we’ve hit our stride while growing sustainably,” comments David Fontain, CEO and Co-Founder, Foresight.
“Foresight and Safesite bring unparalleled value to the work comp market, in a space where incumbents have been somewhat limited from a service standpoint for quite some time,” adds Peter Grant, CEO and Co-Founder, Safesite.
“Insurance innovation has rarely found its way to hard-to-place businesses in the construction, manufacturing and agriculture segments of our economy, but that’s exactly what Foresight has been revolutionizing,” comments Michael Yang, Managing Partner, OMERS Ventures. “With its Safesite mobile application, Foresight has the ability to drive behavior change among its insureds to foster a safer work environment. And a work site with fewer injuries drives down workers compensation premiums for the policyholder and drives up profitability for the insurer. These are the virtuous cycles that we look for when investing in the InsurTech arena.”
Foresight describes itself as moving with the speed and agility of a tech company, but with the skill and knowledge of a tried-and-true insurer, having recruited top distribution and underwriting leadership comprising more than 150 years of combined underwriting experience. A statement from the company says that, at a time when proximity to broker and client is key, Foresight Group’s fully-remote safety and insurance professional workforce is geographically located where their clients are—improving the ease of relationship management, which Fontain stresses, “keeps customer-centricity at the heart of everything we do.”
Foresight notes that it has managed to deliver on its value proposition to stakeholders while maintaining steady quarterly premium growth against plan and keeping its combined ratio at 82 percent and loss ratio at 61 percent at the close of its first year of underwriting, which the company characterizes as an early demonstration of the soundness of its financial model.
Foresight says its policyholders are seeing “the needle move,” and in many cases, within a single policy year.
“Last year we saw clients increase their monthly safety actions by 330 percent in safety activity with Safesite,” says Grant. “The machine learning and data science behind the Safesite Score allows us to benchmark safety performance in real time, and empowers our clients to improve their safety behaviors. Our policyholders love that they can actively work toward reducing their premiums over time through interactions with our platform.”
Strategic Imperatives
In addition to geographic expansion, Foresight says its 2022 strategic imperatives include exploring adjacent commercial lines of business to complement their market-leading workers compensation product, and continuing to source the best underwriting, business development, and insurance talent across the U.S.
“We’ve stuck firmly to our core mission—delivering our policyholder clients a reduction in workplace safety incidents and a reduction in premiums,” says Fontain. “We’re eager to show all of our stakeholders what’s in store for year two and beyond.”
