The property insurance claim payout process in the US is a painful, and often manual, process that involves multiple parties, physical checks, and insurance proceeds split across numerous bank accounts. These manual workflows result in policyholders waiting unnecessarily for their homes to be repaired and liveable. It is expected that nearly $500 billion in property payment claims will be paid out this year, with most of these transactions still taking place via paper checks. With natural disasters on the rise, these claims are only expected to rise.
That’s why Headline is proud to lead the $12M Series A investment in iink, a workflow automation and B2B payments platform that is removing friction across multiple stakeholders in the Property & Casualty (P&C) payment value chain, in order to distribute insurance claim payouts quicker and more efficiently and get policyholders back in their homes.
Founded in 2018 by a contractor and a public adjuster, Ryan Holliday and Ken Lollar, iink’s founders experienced these pain points first-hand. Thomas McGrath joined the founding team as CEO in late 2021 as the company looked to further accelerate growth and build a solution to a systemic problem. The company was built to initially be a workflow tool that automates the collection of digital signatures across these various stakeholders and then disburses the claim payout funds.
“iink has seen great success to date tripling in size since our last round by innovating in an industry that has historically been underserved when it comes to technology. Our vision is not only to expedite payments but to also position ourselves as a fintech company that provides specialized financial capabilities to our customers. We want to build iink into a platform for property restoration professionals to operate and grow their business in a way that has never been supported before,” said Tom McGrath CEO and co-founder of iink.
The company’s near-term product roadmap positions iink as a verticalized operating system for contractors, providing a digital wallet, embedded insurance, and debit card for contractors to pay for supplies. The longer-term vision is to build a closed-loop payment network between the insurance carriers, the mortgage lenders, the homeowners, and contractors, to move insurance payments from physical checks to digital payouts.
We’re joined in this round by co-investors Motley Fool Ventures, Chartline Capital Partners, Silver Circle Ventures, and several of iink's existing investors. We are thrilled to partner with link and play a role in helping them achieve their vision. Whether that is making sure that public adjusters can easily get paid, or that contractors have the funds to start restoration work, or the loss draft servicers not having to hunt for the right paper check to match in their system, all of these pieces tie together to ultimately getting people back in their homes faster. Not only is iink making an impact on people’s lives, but they are also disrupting and changing a manual antiquated procedure in the process. We are excited to partner with iink on the road to making this vision a reality.