Waterdrop Closes $230M Series D Funding Round

According to VCBeat, on August 20, Shen Peng, founder and CEO of Waterdrop, announced that the company had completed a Series D financing of US$230 million, jointly led by Swiss Re and Tencent, with additional support from existing investors IDG Capital and Lighting Global Fund. It is understood that Waterdrop is the first insurance technology company invested by Swiss Re in China.

In 2019, Waterdrop raised RMB￥500 million in Series B financing and RMB￥1 billion in Series C financing. The latest round of financing has reached US$230 million, which is the highest record in the global insurance technology sector in 2020 so far.

Waterdrop is an insurance platform that plans to solve the problem of high medical fees faced by most patients, especially those with a critical illness. 

As a leading insurance technology platform, Waterdrop sticks with cooperation with its partners. Yang Guang, the general manager of Waterdrop, said that Waterdrop will invest more than US$2 billion in new science and technology infrastructure of insurance in the next three years, "with the increasing degree of on-line transformation of insurance service, it puts forward new requirements, which will drive the upgrading and reconstruction of a new r infrastructure."

Shenpeng said that proceeds from the latest round will be used for the application of AI, big data and other technologies in Waterdrop's business, provide users with more efficient insurance services. The company will also develop the services with the combination of health insurance, covering medical (online doctors visits, green channel of serious illness, overseas medical treatment and accident rescue, nursing care of serious illness), and health (medical examination, genetic testing, cancer screening) services, to build the Chinese version of a united health group.

Waterdrop has launched a new project of "insurance + medicine" a few months ago, of which the tentative name is "Shuidi Haoyaofu", providing drug coverage for healthy and diseased people. It aims to use commercial insurance to connect the payer and drug companies, letting people pay less to get better drugs, diagnosis and treatment.

Swiss Re was among the first foreign reinsurers to enter China after the country gradually opened its insurance market. Swiss Re set up representative offices in Beijing and Shanghai in 1995 and 1996 respectively. Swiss Re is contributing to the development of the insurance industry.

Founded in Shenzhen, China, in 1998, Tencent is an internet service portal offering value-added internet, mobile, telecom, and online advertising services. The company is well-known for its communications and social platforms Weixin and QQ.