YuLife raises $120m in its Series C funding round to accelerate global expansion

By Joy Dumasia

YuLife, the tech-driven insurance company on a mission to inspire people to live their best lives, announced that it has raised $120m in a Series C led by Dai-ichi Life Holdings Inc, a new strategic investor in the company. The funding round, which YuLife’s existing investors supported, takes YuLife’s total funding to $206m since the company was founded in 2016, having raised capital from top-tier investors including Creandum, LocalGlobe, Target Global, Latitude, Anthemis, OurCrowd, Notion, MMC and Eurazeo. YuLife will use the capital to broaden its reach into new global markets and scale its product range, delivering financial products that improve lives and reward well-being. This furthers the company’s ambition of transforming financial services into a force for good.

YuLife believes that the $6 trillion insurance industry is not fit for the future due to low trust, low perceived value and low engagement. The global well-being crisis, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, has meant a huge gap to fill in the market. YuLife’s flagship product, group life insurance, has achieved rapid traction in a market lacking innovation.

YuLife has fundamentally changed the nature of life insurance, creating an innovative new ‘win-win’ model which benefits individuals, businesses and society. The highly engaging, game-like YuLife app enables YuLife policyholders to complete everyday wellness activities to earn YuCoin, which they can use to buy gifts for themselves, friends or family or to improve the world through planting trees and donating to charity. Over a third of YuLife customers engage with the company every day, compared to once a year for the average insurer, and 87% report an improvement in their well-being due to having YuLife as their insurer.

“Insurance has the potential to achieve tremendous social good”, said Sammy Rubin, CEO and Founder, YuLife. “Unusually for financial services, our product creates a deep alignment of interests between the insurer, the company and the individual. We believe that well-being must be holistic, and we are committed to building a global financial services brand that can change the lives of millions of people across the world.”

“Companies that choose YuLife are making a statement that they care deeply about their employees”, continued Rubin. “Now more than ever, it is important for companies to go above and beyond to build a culture of care in the workplace, as traditional benefits packages just do not do the job. Our proposition addresses a vital business need exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the ‘Great Resignation.”

“Dai-ichi Life is committed to supporting companies that have a proven track record of changing people’s lives for the better, and YuLife does exactly that by bringing tangible value to financial products to bolster individuals’ well-being,” said Toshiaki Sumino, Director, Managing Executive Officer, Dai-ichi Life Holdings, Inc. “YuLife has immense potential to build on its achievements to date, and we are thrilled to invest and help propel YuLife towards its next steps and scale its global operations. YuLife shares our ethos of harnessing the latest trends in technology to make a genuine difference to the lives of those using financial products.”