SA国际传媒

Buying a home is one of the biggest, and most expensive, decisions in a person鈥檚 life. Over the past year or so, we鈥檝e written about a slew of startups that have developed technology aimed at making the process smoother and cheaper in one way or another.

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Today, another such startup, San Francisco-based has announced a massive $123 million Series C round of funding at a valuation of $623 million.

led the round, which totals more than all of States Title鈥檚 previous funding rounds , according to SA国际传媒 data. With the latest investment, States Title has now raised a total of $229 million since its September 2016 inception.

New investors , and also provided 鈥渟ignificant investment.鈥� All of States Title鈥檚 previous backers also participated in the Series C round, which included a 鈥渓arge investment鈥� from , and additional capital from Assurant, , 聽and SCOR Global P&C Ventures.

What it does

I hopped on the phone with CEO and founder , who described States Title as 鈥渁 technology-driven solution for closing mortgages instantly.鈥� While it initially was founded to instantly underwrite title insurance, the company has expanded that same approach to handle 鈥渆very aspect鈥� of closing and escrow.

鈥淔or the first two years we built what you鈥檇 consider a full-stack insurtech company, but now we鈥檙e an end-to-end title and closing platform,鈥� he told SA国际传媒 News.

The company took its first product to market in the spring of 2018, using machine intelligence to underwrite title insurance.

鈥淲e trained a machine to do in less than a minute what it would historically take, start to end, two to four days,鈥� Simkoff said.

The startup’s technology also can reduce the time of a closing from 30 to 45 days to 20, he added.

The value proposition behind using States Title is simple, he said.

鈥淲e make the antiquated title and escrow experience faster, simpler and cheaper, by providing an instant customer closing experience and enabling mortgage originators and Realtors to be more efficient, which leads to lower costs for everyone involved,鈥� he said.

Unique growth path

States Title鈥檚 approach to growth has been unusual. In 2018, it approached Lennar聽 Homes鈥搊ne of the nation鈥檚 largest聽 homebuilders鈥搕o buy out its title and insurance businesses (North American Title Company and North American Title Insurance).

Lennar agreed to sell the business for a minority stake in States Title, in addition to structuring a credit facility, and the startup ended up acquiring those operations from Lennar in 2019.

鈥淥vernight, we went from being a 25-person insurtech startup to acquiring the eighth-largest title and escrow company in the U.S. and having just over 1,000 employees,鈥� Simkoff told SA国际传媒 News. 鈥淚t was kind of a minnow-swallows-the-whale type scenario.鈥�

States Title then gained national scale and distribution, lots of transactional data and, of course, revenue with the deal. The startup ended 2019 with close to $200 million in revenue, he said.

States Title鈥檚 customers are some of the largest mortgage lenders in the U.S., including one of the top two largest bank lenders and two of the top ten largest nonbank lenders. Transaction volume grew by 100 times in 2019 compared to the year prior, according to the company. States Title鈥檚 newly combined business has closed or issued insurance policies for nearly half a million real estate transactions in the past year.

Its goal with the new capital is to primarily invest in R&D, which includes 鈥渁ggressively鈥� staffing up its data science and engineering teams. It鈥檚 also building out a new operations and service delivery model.

managing general partner of Greenspring Associates, said the company鈥檚 automated and patented technology 鈥渟treamlines the laborious title and escrow process.鈥�

鈥淓specially in the current economic climate, the mortgage industry needs to be re-imagined with transformative technological solutions to reduce costs and improve the customer experience,鈥� he added in a statement. States Title is leading the vanguard of this transformation.鈥�

We鈥檝e previously written about other startups tacking this space, including Snapdocs and Homelight.

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