Nationwide Makes Venture Investment in InsureTech Start-Up Socotra

Nationwide’s latest venture capital investment is being made with the intention that it willhelp “build a better mouse-trap” with regard to state-of-the art consumer and business insurance solutions.

Nationwide’s investment in Socotra—a San Francisco-based startup and creator of the first cloud-native, coreinsurance platform for new products—is part of Socotra’s second round of venture funding. Socotra is focused ondeveloping a technology platform that will let insurance providers deliver new solutions faster than ever before.

“One of the keys to successful product innovation is the ability to quickly deploy solutions and make product updatesbased on consumer insights and feedback,” said Erik Ross, leader of Nationwide’s venture capital team. “Thistechnology could be a critical tool in developing the insurance solutions of the future.”

Socotra is the industry’s first cloud-native platform with open configuration and APIs, empowering insurers to deploypowerful backend technology with their own engineering resources or the systems integrator of their choice. The startupprovides the core technologies upon which innovative, personalized insurance products can be built. Socotra’sagility, flexibility, reliability and modern design helps offer carriers’ lower costs, faster product releases, and easierintegrations with future technologies.

Socotra provides companies such as Nationwide with an inside track on the technological chassis upon which theinsurance products of tomorrow will be built.

“We’re interested in a variety of platforms that will enable us to meet our member and partner needs with the speedand convenience that are becoming table stakes in our industry,” said Nationwide Chief Innovation Officer ScottSanchez. “Investing in a start-up like Socotra is just one of many ways we’re looking to re-invent the consumer-facingand backroom aspects of the insurance solutions of tomorrow.”

Nationwide’s investment in Socotra is part of its continuing commitment to deploy more than $100 million in venturecapital to fuel innovation and spark industry disruption. In addition to the Socotra investment, Nationwide has alsoannounced the following innovation related efforts over the past year:

• Nationwide’s venture capital team has made numerous strategic investments to date, including Nexar, Betterview, BlueVine, blooom, Insurify, Next Insurance, Matic and Sure.
• In June 2018, Nationwide announced its plans to open a new innovation center in the Arena District near its Columbus-based headquarters. It expects the new center to open in 2019  

Nationwide is committed to driving innovation that helps members:

• Live comfortably in retirement
• Meet their insurance and financial needs in novel and digital ways
• Protect their data and digital assets
• Protect them in the evolving area of mobility