Luxury insurance company Grace announced a $6.4 million (EUR 5.9 million) seed round led by Fintech Collective and SpeedInvest on Wednesday.
Grace, a luxury insurance company, works with luxury brands to protect consumer goods purchased. If an item is stolen or damaged, consumers can create a claim via the Grace app. For brands, the Grace app also offers fraud detection, billing processing, and logistic adjustments.
The company confirmed it is working with at least one major luxury brand in Europe, but was refused to share the name.
Co-founder and president Lou Dana said she and her co-founder Grace CTO Martin Lenweiter Quentin Roy and Martin Lenweiter decided to launch the company, especially when traveling abroad, after seeing many luxury items still not protected.
“There was clearly a huge gap between the level of service that luxury brands promise and what happens after a purchase when something goes wrong,” Dana said.
The number of stolen luxury items has almost tripled over the past few years, and it will cost fashion houses to catch up. Grace says he is working with Chubb, the world leader in insurance, to undertake and secure its services.
However, it has not been the easiest task to always complete a luxury home that is compelling to adopt new technology. Roy said the brand struggles to control what happens to his product after sales, especially when problems arise. “We didn’t just provide protection,” Roy said of the company’s pitch. “We were helping to boost their brand.”
There are other types of consumer goods insurance companies, such as Zing Cover, which offers specialized insurance for luxury goods. Roy said Grace is not competing with one company because it is at the intersection of embedded insurance, luxury services and post-purchase protection. Kima, Bpifrance and Firstminute Capital all participated in the round.
Dana said the fresh capital will be used to help the company scale across Europe and hire more people in product engineering. We hope to cover over 200,000 luxury items by the end of this year.