Nationwide Announces Strategic Venture Capital Investment in InsurTech AI Startup Betterview

On the eve of the 2018 hurricane season, Nationwide is announcing a strategic venture capital investment in Betterview, which is quickly becoming the platform essential to every transaction around buildings and properties. This funding is being used to extend Betterview’s machine learning platform across additional data sources to unlock valuable insight about commercial and residential properties for P&C insurers and reinsurers.

Nationwide—one of the largest insurance and financial services providers in the United States—has earmarked more than $100 million in venture capital funding to invest in startups and early-stage companies that are focused on shaping the future of insurance.  Recent investments and partnerships by Nationwide’s venture capital arm include: Nexar, Matic, blooom, Insurify, Next Insurance, as well as Sure.

“We were very impressed with the mix of insurance and entrepreneurial experience of the co-founders and the team,” said Erik Ross, leader of Nationwide’s venture capital team. “After assessing many other companies in the marketplace, we quickly noticed how their experience translated into significantly better software, services, and data for insurers like Nationwide. These capabilities will drive faster response in the wake of catastrophic events, enhanced underwriting sophistication for day-to-day business and a better overall experience for our members.”

Betterview’s machine learning platform, generates data and analytics on building and property conditions, characteristics, and potential hazards by analyzing satellite, aerial, and drone imagery. This information can be used throughout an organization, from loss control and underwriting, to claims and catastrophe response.

“We are very excited to announce Nationwide Ventures’ investment in Betterview,” said David Lyman, Co-Founder & CEO, Betterview.  “Our relationship with Nationwide goes back to when we first met them at Plug and Play’s insurance accelerator.  At that time our sole focus was on using drones to transform how buildings and properties were inspected. Since then, as our customers’ needs have evolved, so have we by enhancing our artificial intelligence capabilities, building a mobile app, developing a roof risk score, and integrating various third party data providers into our SaaS platform to put historical weather, property hazard risks, and building information at their fingertips.”

“With Nationwide’s recent strategic investment in Betterview, we will continue to create more value for our customers by expanding our artificial intelligence capabilities to deliver the next generation of building and property data, analytics, and insights that can be used throughout an organization,” explained Dave Tobias, Co-Founder & COO, Betterview.