A startup that’s raised over $290 million to disrupt the car-insurance business using AI just hired a Progressive veteran for a new role

Metromile

An insurance-technology company called Metromile that has raised more than $290 million created an executive role focused on managing its actuarial, insurance-product-management, and underwriting teams, Business Insider has learned.
Jeff Briglia will be the company’s first chief insurance officer.
Briglia previously held roles at Progressive, Allstate, and Mercury Insurance.

A car-insurance startup that has raised over $290 million hired a former insurance executive in a new role, Business Insider has learned.

Metromile, a US insurance-technology company that calculates car-insurance policies using a pay-per-mile model, named Jeff Briglia its first chief insurance officer. Briglia, who spent over 15 years at Progressive, Allstate, and Mercury Insurance, will lead Metromile’s actuarial, insurance-product-management, and underwriting teams, according to Dan Preston, Metromile’s CEO.

Briglia will manage teams in San Francisco — where Metromile is based — and Tempe, Arizona, and will look to grow both groups in the coming months, Preston said. He’ll split his time among the two cities and Cleveland, where he was based.

Preston said Briglia would also work with the team behind Metromile’s virtual claims assistant, called AVA, and insurers looking to license Metromile’s technology. The artificial-intelligence system, designed to reconstruct accidents to determine whether a claim is accurate and automatically approve payments, is involved in a quarter of Metromile’s claims, Preston said, adding that he expects that percentage to grow in 2019.

Briglia was a general manager for Mercury Insurance for just under a year before joining Metromile, according to his LinkedIn profile. Before that, he spent two years as a senior vice president at Allstate in product and claims leadership. Briglia’s longest tenure was the nearly 14 years he spent at Progressive in various roles.

Metromile raised $90 million in Series E funding in July in a round led by the insurance companies Tokio Marine Holdings and Intact Financial, bringing its total funding to over $290 million. The company did not disclose a valuation.

Insurance companies are increasingly seeing how they can best work with innovative startups looking to disrupt their businesses. Venture-capital firms have also taken notice of the growing insurtech space and its potential, describing it as one of the hottest fintech themes they plan to follow in 2019.

Sign up here for our weekly newsletter "Wall Street Insider," a behind-the-scenes look at the stories dominating banking, business, and big deals.

NOW WATCH: A Microsoft EVP explains how every company is becoming digital — from farming to staffing

See Also:

Source: Business Insider