Posted In:

Payments


FinTech Collective Invests in Diesta

Published:

Oct 15, 2024


Authors:

Toby Triebel

Samantha Wulfson

Posted In:

Payments

Published:

Oct 15, 2024


Authors:

Toby Triebel

Samantha Wulfson


Share:

We are excited to announce FinTech Collective’s lead investment in Diesta’s $3.8m Seed raise. The London-based software solution for the insurance industry is focused on streamlining premium payment reconciliation for brokers and MGAs, bringing a long awaited revitalization to a massive, global industry that is stuck in the 90’s. The new capital will be used to scale Diesta’s product suite and geographic footprint.

Company Description


Diesta was founded by Julian Schömig (CEO) and Chris Davis (CTO) in 2022 with the vision to eliminate premium processing time and costs and become the central settlement system for insurers and brokers worldwide. Julian’s determination to address real-time premium payments processing, reconciliation, and treasury management stemmed from his time working throughout three countries with Munich Re, focused on aviation reinsurance, actuarial science, and data analytics. This depth and breadth of experience only further illuminated the industry’s pain points.

In the UK, 35% of premium payments pass through three different intermediate accounts before reaching insurers, with brokers often struggling with millions in unallocated and disputed premiums. This process causes delays and data losses, with market participants absorbing the cost in their expense ratios and ultimately passing it on to clients. The lack of visibility on the live cash status results in excessive manual reconciliation costs of more than £2.5m per broker, with unallocated funds exceeding £50m over periods of just 7 days. What Julian experienced planted the seed that became Diesta.

In the time that has followed, Chris’s technical expertise propelled Diesta to develop a fully digitised, AI-enabled solution. For the first time clients can achieve full control of their treasury management, monetizing payment flows through multiple channels. The vision and execution of the co-founders has been both complementary and successful in lightening the industry’s heavy operational load and improving the accuracy of otherwise manual, daily excel calculations with auto reconciliation - in turn enhancing employee productivity and refocusing time on higher value activities.

FTC Summary


We met the team at the very beginning of the year, and have spent the past months getting to know co-founders Julian and Chris while witnessing their quick path moving up the customer value chain to capture clients with global operations and more than $1b in revenue.

Our thesis surrounding the opportunity for SaaS solutions to modernize insurance infrastructure is long standing, as the industry has been late to the game in reaping the benefits of innovation that have propelled other financial institutions forward. Isolated legacy systems, manual processes, and fragmented distribution channels still persist but are ripe for disruption.

Premium payments in particular have stood out to us. Although digitisation is slowly making policyholder payments easier, this process does not extend throughout the insurance value chain to premium payments. Trillions of premiums are written per year, with 7x the volume being processed in payments given the convoluted flows of funds. This translates to an enormous operational and financial burden, with the cost of premium processing reaching $32b annually.

Diesta’s end-to-end premium reconciliation engine can not only cut these costs by 75%, but we believe can entirely redefine the industry’s status quo. We look forward to partnering with Diesta on this journey.

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with FinTech Collective on our mission to transform B2B insurance payments. After meeting the team in London and New York, we’ve seen firsthand their operator mindset and bold vision-setting, which align perfectly with our ambitions for the future.”

Julian Schömig and Chris Davis, Diesta Co-Founders


Share:

The views expressed here are those of the individual FinTech Collective LLC (together with its affiliates “FTC”) personnel quoted and are not the views of FTC or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by FTC. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, FTC has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. In addition, this content may include third-party advertisements; FTC has not reviewed such advertisements and does not endorse any advertising content contained therein.

Any designations found herein have been made by a third party, and although FTC has no reason to believe that such designations, or the criteria for being considered for such designations, are inaccurate or misleading, FTC does not guarantee its accuracy, and such designations may be incomplete or condensed. No compensation was paid in exchange for any designations, endorsements, or testimonials found herein. The hyperlinks referred to herein are provided for your reference only.

This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. This content does not constitute an offering or form part of any offering or any solicitation of any offer to subscribe to or purchase any investment by FTC, nor shall it or the fact of its distribution form the basis of, or be relied upon in connection with any contract therefore. Any such offer will be made only by means of definitive investment offering documents. The information included herein is subject to change without notice to any recipient. Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by FTC, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by FTC (excluding investments for which the issuer has not provided permission for FTC to disclose publicly as well as unannounced investments in publicly traded digital assets) is available at https://www.fintech.io/portfolio and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://www.fintech.io/disclosures for additional important information.