LifeBid said it has launched the campaign with equity crowdfunding platform Stride Equity, following a strategic co-investment of $700,000 from industry partners and the Stride Group.
LifeBid is the first company that Stride Equity has approved for an investment and concurrent hosting on their platform since its launch earlier this year.
Maria Halasz, chief executive and co-founder of Stride Equity, said: “We are thrilled to announce LifeBid as our first investment and the first portfolio company on the Stride Equity platform that retail and wholesale investors can co-invest in with us.
“LifeBid is the perfect example of the type of businesses we look to fund; it has experienced and passionate founders who set out to solve an urgent unmet need in an underserved industry by providing an innovative technology solution that is highly scalable.
“Their early engagement with the entire insurance ecosystem is a proof point for us, as they build on these strategic partnerships to facilitate rapid market penetration.”
LifeBid is developing an end-to-end technology solution and said it plans to “revolutionise the way life insurance advice is provided and managed”.
The company’s digital platform has been developed to enable financial advice providers and insurers to “seamlessly engage, educate, advise, and manage clients’ life insurance needs”, with LifeBid claiming it can cut costs to serve by up to 90 per cent.
Brett Wright, founder of LifeBid, said: “As advisers ourselves, and like many others in the life insurance sector, we have seen how expensive it has become for consumers to access good quality advice and cover, and experienced how hard, unprofitable, and risky it has become for advisers, licensees, and insurers to help more Australians.
“We want our adviser and licensee industry colleagues to be owners, beneficiaries, and the driving force behind LifeBid. Partnering with the Stride team in this crowdfunding offer will make this possible and we are excited to be their first portfolio company.”
LifeBid added that its digital solution aims to connect all industry stakeholders and “enable advisers to seamlessly manage their clients’ needs on a single platform, providing better value and experience for customers”.
It added that there is currently a waitlist of 2,000 advisers for the platform in Australia.
“With a highly experienced founding team, track record of delivery, great product-market fit, and strong industry support, LifeBid ticks all the boxes for us for an investment and we are excited to bring investors this opportunity through our platform,” Ms Halasz added.
I’m on the wait list because I want to look at it when it is launched. It’s a 1% chance of working and about a 0.5% chance of getting money off me. I wouldn’t be investing based on a waitlist of 2,000 advisers.