Serial entrepreneur and founder of Slide, Bruce Lucas has the domain knowledge necessary to transform the insurtech landscape. His latest startup, Slide, just raised $100M in an oversubscribed Series A funding round. The funding will help the company build out its data-driven technology and operations. Lucas says, “I know that the future of insurance is insurtech and it’s the ability to apply technology to an underlying insurance asset to generate higher margins, better user experiences, [and] go to a more purely digital platform.” Slide will use AI capabilities and data science to offer clients a tailored quote on a platform with an industry leading user experience (UX). Their founding team comes from some of the most successful companies in a range of fields, including financial services, insurance and tech.
Slide will primarily focus on profitable business, and that is where AI can be a game changer. Slide’s platform generates projections based on more data points than anything else on the market. Lucas understands that without good data, AI will not go far enough to be useful. “I have a data set in excess of $3 trillion total insured value as the nucleus of our AI-generated engine,” which he posits dwarfs the next insurance company that uses artificial intelligence, offering Slide a significant Big Data advantage. Greater data sets offer better reliability. Slide looks at the micro-attributes of the each risk as well as the applicant’s claim trends, credit score, claim-filing history, etc. in order to get an accurate loss ratio.
Since its founding in 2021, Slide has garnered a lot of attention from investors across the country, because Lucas has an excellent entrepreneurial track record. After leaving his law firm in 2008 to move to Florida, he bought into First Home Bank and amassed $1B in assets, putting the bank in the rank of the largest SBA lenders in the U.S. Then in 2012, Lucas started Heritage Insurance, and rocketed the company from startup to IPO in only 20 months. The Slide team is excited that their Series A funding round, led by Gries Investment Funds and Tampa Bay Ventures, did better than they anticipated.
Always looking for the next challenge, Lucas moved on from Heritage to start Slide, with the goal of integrating artificial intelligence and data science to modernize the insurance underwriting experience. He wants Slide to change the way insurance is done, by using modern technology to reduce risk, increase personalization and anticipate trends. The company wants to offer clients what they need, not the kitchen sink.
When asked about how climate change affects projections, especially given that a lot of the business that Slide underwrites is taking place in Florida, Lucas expresses that climate change is real. He has seen its impacts first-hand, and believes by using Slide to integrate recent data sets into projections, that the company will have the most comprehensive and detailed risk assessment available. Lucas also stays abreast of things like local building codes and enforcement of breaches to understand whether an area will offer more risk than profit. His vast experience in the insurance industry makes him well suited to the task of ushering in the future of insurtech.
Lucas is confident that he has the domain knowledge to change the insurance landscape, to be at the forefront of making the transition to digital, AI-powered, accurate and profitable quotes, which will leave consumers and the company better off. Investors agree, as they flocked to the company with this latest injection of $100M, hoping to be at the forefront of the insurtech boom.
