Resilience raises $80mn in Series C round at $650mn valuation

Resilience has closed an $80mn Series C round, with its president Mario Vitale telling this publication the funding gives the cyber MGA a $650mn valuation and will help fuel growth in the US middle market and internationally.

The Series C round was co-led by General Catalyst and Corey Thomas of Rapid7, and also included participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Founders Fund, Charles River Ventures, Shield Capital and Intact Ventures.

San Francisco-based Resilience launched in November 2020 with capacity from Canadian insurer Intact. The firm was previously known as Arceo.ai, which in September 2019 completed a $37mn fundraising.

In an interview with The Insurer, Vitale said the new fund raise, which gives Resilience a valuation of $650mn, will fuel further expansion.

“It allows us now to really expand by investing more in our business,” he said. “We’ll use this new capital to expand not just domestically, as we’ve done so well in 2021, but in 2022 also in overseas markets, starting with the UK and then Continental Europe and so on.”

In a release, Resilience highlighted that enterprises in the middle market – such as in manufacturing, agriculture, universities, hospitals and construction – underpin the American economy. Some of these areas are the most stressed for cyber insurance, but Vitale said Resilience views each risk on its own merits and will consider all areas.

“What we are not is what I would term class underwriters,” he said. “We have a risk selection process where the primary factor is your cyber hygiene. It’s the tools you have to protect your organisation and the practices and training you have, not the class of business.”

Vitale added: “The other carriers that tend to do traditional class underwriting are missing the point here and part of it is they don’t have the security evaluation and risk evaluation capabilities that we have.”

Resilience is currently gearing up for its international expansion.

As this publication reported, the company in September appointed Kyle Bryant as international chief underwriting officer to lead an overseas expansion. He previously spent seven years at Chubb developing cyber outside North America.

“Kyle is leading the way for us in business planning conversations with carriers for support, licensing, regulation compliance, as well as reinsurance capacity support,” Vitale said.

“For us, this is an expansion play. We are already a well-established MGA with A+ paper, so this is an expansion into different geography rather than changing anything to do with the game of our book. It’s the same ‘insure and secure’ value proposition.”

Vitale said Resilience has not yet agreed carrier partnerships for the international business, to add to the US business it writes on Intact paper.

“I can’t tell you if at the end of the day it’s going to be one carrier or two or more. We are just launching this effort right now,” he said. “We’ll be knee-deep in those conversations, considerations and decision-making within the next 60 to 90 days.”

Built for growth throughout the cycle

Resilience highlighted that the hardened cyber insurance market has enabled newcomers with an innovative approach to rise to the top, as ransomware claims have surged.

“In the hard market, when everybody’s contracting, brokers are looking for solutions for their clients and looking for alternatives for their clients. That enabled us to get serious consideration,” Vitale said.

He continued: “The hard market has of course added some tailwinds to the brokers and insurers taking a look at us. But I am absolutely convinced that this unique proposition will play extremely well in any market condition. This is for the long run.”

The executive described Resilience’s approach as being like an FM Global for cyber risk engineering and insurance risk transfer. He said this model is built for any part of the market cycle.

“When I was first launching this at the end of 2019, when I said we needed to have a unique relationship with every client a lot of people said to me, ‘It’s so easy to place cyber risk these days.’ They said that nobody would want to take the time to have these conversations with insurers.

“But guess what, people now are having real losses in real time and everybody is just so appreciative of the help we are giving. I can’t tell you how many losses we have helped our insureds prevent from happening because of imminent attacks we helped stop.”