附近上门

, an Oakland, California-based startup that offers supplementary health insurance, recently raised $3.5 million in seed funding and started offering its first product.

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, CEO of the company, said he wants the company to be an insurance policy in your pocket when an unexpected hospitalization happens. Its seed funding was co-led by and .

鈥淗ealth care spending has skyrocketed over the last 20 years due to rising costs in hospital stays, increased specialist visits and new, expensive treatments for a range of diseases,鈥� said of Costanoa Ventures. 鈥淟ifeRaft takes on the health expense monster, relieving the financial stress for patients so they can focus on getting better, rather than how they will pay their hospital or specialists鈥� bill.鈥�

LifeRaft was co-founded in March by insurtech and fintech veterans Blumenfeld, and , who previously worked at , and , respectively.

Its first insurance plan product went live in November: A hospital supplement insurance offering affordable monthly premium options and a direct-cash benefit to the policyholder upon hospital admission for a covered event, Blumenfeld said. The platform is end-to-end digital鈥攆rom application to policy generation to claims鈥攁nd aims to offer a seamless purchase, enrollment and administrative experience.

鈥淲hile researching insurance, the same question kept coming up: If this was something serious, how would we handle it?鈥� Blumenfeld told 附近上门 News. 鈥淚t kept coming back to: Where are the health-related products that look like life insurance?

鈥淚f I get a cancer diagnosis, which I know is an underwriteable risk, I would probably be happy to pay a premium against that. Then we can pull enough money together to deal with the problem, but not be in a situation where the health plan has all of the control,鈥� he added.

Its seed funding will be used for product development, including discovering what kinds of coverages can be built and how, as well as how to support operations around insurance, such as enrollment, policy generation, claims and the most critical: how to get it into people鈥檚 hands, Blumenfeld said.

He likens LifeRaft鈥檚 product to , which has a market capitalization of more than $31 billion. Overall, the has brought in $1.2 trillion in revenue in 2020.

鈥淎flac is the brand that everyone knows in this space, and they do well and provide a valuable service, but technology has shifted enough that we can figure out how to do the next stage of this and fill in some of the gaps,鈥� he added.

Meanwhile, there are early demand signals in the market, and data is showing that LifeRaft鈥檚 product fills a niche if it gets to people at the right time, Blumenfeld said.

鈥淯ltimately, we would love for people to begin thinking about LifeRaft in the same way they do when they purchase life insurance,鈥� he added.

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