Hong Kong's OneDegree upsizes Series B to $55m
Hong Kong insurance start-up OneDegree has raised USD 27m from a group including Gobi Partners. It is billed as an extension to a Series B round from 2021, bringing the overall total to USD 55m.
The latest investment also included re-ups from Sun Hung Kai and financial technology specialist Bitrock Capital. OneDegree said they were supported by some new investors.
It follows a USD 28m Series B in August 2021, featuring Gobi, Sun Hung Kai, and Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund. Bitrock led a USD 30m Series A in 2019 with support from Cathay Venture and the Hong Kong government’s Cyberport accelerator.
OneDegree entered Cyberport in 2018 and has gone on to receive at least HKD 400m (USD 51m) from the programme’s Macro Fund, which typically invests around Series A. Total funding since the company’s inception in 2016 comes to USD 97m.
Thomas Tsao, co-founder of Gobi, described the company as a “relentless” innovator. “Their expanding presence across Asian markets and beyond signifies the vast potential of their pioneering insurance solutions, promising a bright, global future,” he said in a social media post.
OneDegree was founded by former J.P. Morgan banker Alvin Kwock (pictured) with a view to bringing speed to insurance policy purchasing and claims settlement through technology. Most users are 35 years or younger and considered affluent; about a quarter of the total customer base is aged 26-30.
The platform, formally launched in 2020, is said to process claims applications in less than five days on average, from the receipt of the application to claims approval. Insurance enrolment can be finalised in as little as three minutes.
Expansion areas include direct-to-consumer pet, critical illness, and fire cover – the latter has historically been dominated by local banks – as well as cryptocurrencies. OneDegree describes itself as Asia’s first and only digital asset insurance provider.
OneInfinity, the digital assets offering, has established more than 10 partnerships – including reinsurers, virtual asset exchanges, custodians, and asset managers – in the past 14 months. The company uses Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI artificial intelligence (AI) model and is experimenting with generative AI in its product offering, partially in terms of cybersecurity.
OneDegree claims to have achieved underwriting profit across all product lines as of last year, with monthly revenue rising by 4x in the past two years. The company said its portfolio’s loss ratio improved by around 40% during this period. It hopes to achieve profitability by the end of 2024.
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