Why it matters: The California-based company is expected to use part of its new cash pile to pursue acquisitions.
How it works: Patra employs a team of insurance experts who use a proprietary tech platform called PatraOne to take care of administrative and operational tasks on behalf of its clients.
- That includes everything from processing things like certificates of insurance to checking policies, downloading documents, doing reconciliations and accounting work, according to Patra founder and CEO John Simpson.
- In some cases, he says, the firm even white-labels its services and manages some small accounts for clients from start to finish.
- The company now serves 250 clients and “70% of the top 100 brokers use us in some fashion or another,” according to Simpson.
Context: Earlier this year, FTV raised $2.3 billion to invest in fintech-focused businesses.
- At the time, FTV managing partner Brad Bernstein told Ryan that the firm would primarily invest in capital-efficient companies with solid fundamentals.
- “We’re not just piling into later-stage unicorn deals where they’re trading at a crazy valuation,” he said.
Between the lines: With that in mind, Patra perfectly fits the description of the type of business FTV is looking to bet on.
- The company has been mostly bootstrapped and has posted consecutive year-over-year revenue growth since it was founded in 2005.
What’s next: M&A opportunities and new locations.
- “We finally reached a point where we could scale much faster but to do that, we wanted to make certain we had the capital behind us to take on some M&A activities or international expansions so we can grow at even a much faster clip,“ Simpson says.
Of note: Along with the investment, Bernstein and FTV principal Mike Vostrizansky will join Patra’s board of directors.
