Female Founder Sets Record for Largest Pre-Seed Round in Latin America with $6.7 Million Investment

Latú Seguros – an insuretech focused on providing coverages to Latin American businesses, today announces its $6.7 million pre-seed round – the largest one reported in Latin America’s history. The round was led by CRV and Monashees, with participation of ONEVC, Latitude and SVAngel.

With Latú, businesses can get coverage of up to $10 million against lawsuits, cyberattacks, down time, property damage, errors in profession and compliance gaps, among others in just a couple minutes. Policies most commonly known as general liability, property, cyber, Errors & Omissions (E&O) and Directors and Officers (D&O).

Founder Paola Neira, previously led the tech team building the fulfillment engine at Rappi. She came up with the idea for Latú, short for Latin American Tech Underwriters, while providing working capital for SMEs out of a fund she has been running for over a decade. Helping these businesses made her realize how hard it was for companies to obtain insurance policies and how vulnerable they were to millions of risks.

Traditional carriers have been trying to understand and battle today’s risks with antiquated tools limiting the market’s growth. Latú aims to radically change the way businesses insurance works by pulling forward innovation into the industry. There’s a true sense of empowerment that comes with helping support the LatAm companies by giving them access to financial products that they would otherwise have no access to.

“Real magic happens when combining the concept of a safety net, which is ultimately what insurance is at its core, with technology” says Neira. “We have an incredible opportunity to replace legacy policies with lifetime risk-mitigating partnerships, which work best to solve the needs for a fast-paced and hyper-connected world. Businesses can no longer rely on paper ledgers, instead they want, and deserve, to leverage a mix of technological innovation, insurance experience and local knowledge which is exactly what we are using at Latú to build products.”

“It has long been a challenge for businesses to get insurance and the protection needed to allow them to grow,” says James Green, general partner at CRV. “Ironically, it is securing insurance that quite literally unlocks growth enabling them to do business with large corporations, secure funding, open a new vertical and so much more. We, at CRV believe that foundational companies are created by empowering specific demographics and we are deeply excited by the idea that Paola can do that by giving access to insurance for the businesses of LatAm”.

“Businesses in Latam are severely underserved by the insurance sector, less than 20% of companies have at least one insurance policy which compares to 70% in developed markets. Paola has managed to attract a top team with complementary skills, putting them in the best position to reinvent how insurance is consumed in Latam by democratizing access to it,” adds Fabiola Quinzanos, principal at Monashees.

Currently based in and operating in Brazil, Latú plans to use the funding to continue development of its core underwriting technology, expand its insurance products and continue to grow its team of cyber and engineering experts.

Other angel investors include several founders such as Simon Borrero, Sebastian Mejia and Felipe Villamarin from Rappi, Santiago Suarez and Daniel Vallejo from Addi, Enrique Villamarin from Tul, Igor Mascarenhas from Pier (insurtech), Matthew & Miguel Vega-Sanz from Lula Technologies (insurtech), Alan Jaime from Draftea, former YC investor Sachin Patel and AirBnB alumni fund, among others.