SafetyWing, the Norwegian startup building a global social safety net, today announced the closing of a $35 million series B funding round led by leading European growth investor Kinnevik with full participation from existing investors Creandum and byFounders. The insurance investor Mundi Ventures also joined this round. The funding follows an $8 million series A funding round last year, led by Creandum.
Founded in 2018 by CTO Sarah Sandnes, COO Hans Nyvold Kjellby, and CEO Sondre Rasch, SafetyWing is headquartered in San Francisco, California, but has a 100-strong team of fully remote workers based all over the world.
Its Remote Health insurance is a fully fledged health insurance product for remote teams and entrepreneurs – giving global companies a flexible solution which, in a market first, allows employees to access comprehensive health insurance that works in any country they’re stationed in. The need for the product is obvious: Since last year, it has grown almost 10x.
The funding will enable the business to scale its Remote Health offering, as the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of remote work in companies across the globe.
The move comes as recent research found that demand for remote work is growing ‘faster than ever’ amongst salaried employees, with 81% of respondents in a Morning Consult survey stating they ‘enjoy’ working remotely, and a further 65% claiming to be ‘more productive’ whilst working remotely. 75% also said they would be ‘more likely’ to apply to a job that offers a remote work option.
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Sondre Rasch, co-founder and CEO at SafetyWing, said: “Remote working lets companies hire talent from all over the world, and gives employees more freedom and opportunity. This is one of the greatest paradigm shifts of our generation.”
“SafetyWing was launched because we saw first-hand that while remote teams are global, the infrastructure that supports them, like the social safety net, is not. We built it because we as digital nomads and with a remote team needed it ourselves, and we realized we were not alone. We were our first customers, and it’s been quite a journey to where we are today. We develop our products as software – constantly updating them so that they’re always tailored to the changing work life – and have many more in the pipeline still to come.
“We’ve only seen the beginning of the remote work revolution, and are confident that we have found exactly the right strategic partner in Kinnevik to help us continue on our mission.”
SafetyWing’s vision is to build a ‘global social safety net’ for remote companies, workers, and nomads, making benefits such as health insurance available for anyone in the world. The team is currently building out its Remote Doctor and Remote Retirement product.
Tatiana Shalalvand, Investment Director at Kinnevik, said: “As companies grow their remote teams, they are met with the complexities of attracting and retaining talent globally, combined with considerably tightened labour markets. Companies are battling fiercely to attract the best candidates which is quickly showing employers the importance of offering remote workers more than just a competitive salary. SafetyWing’s unique global travel and health insurance plan helps firms set themselves apart by offering better benefits to remote workforces. We have been very impressed with their strong team and company culture, the way they live and breathe their offer (being a largely remote workforce themselves), and how they have been able to achieve such strong growth in a short time. We’re very excited to partner with SafetyWing to help the team scale global products on their continued growth journey.”
This latest round of funding will be used to deploy Remote Health to more companies and continue to improve the product, as well as to fuel the expansion of the Nomad Insurance product.
