Touchstone Innovations commits another £3m to Concirrus

Touchstone Innovations issued an announcement to the market on Monday, saying it had committed a new £3m, two-tranche investment into Concirrus, which it described as a “leading” insurance internet-of-things (IoT) solution provider based in London.

The AIM-traded company confirmed that, following the new investment, it would hold a 66.9% stake in the issued share capital of the company.

Concirrus was founded in 2012 by Andrew Yeoman, currently CEO, and Craig Hollingworth, head of corporate development, who came directly out of the telematics and communications industries.

Yeoman, formerly with Trimble Navigation, and Hollingworth, formerly with Orange, O2 and Masternaut, reportedly identified an opportunity to launch a company providing fully integrated business solutions built on a scalable cloud-based platform.

The further investment into Concirrus continued to build Touchstone’s growing ICT portfolio, its board noted.

Its venture director Kelsey Lynn Skinner was currently a board director at Concirrus, and venture partner David Parker chaired the company.

The funding would allow Concirrus to onboard several more insurance customers, and further develop its product platform and data partnerships across several insurance lines of business, with the initial focus on marine insurance.

“My co-founder Craig Hollingworth and I founded this company with the vision to enable large corporates to access and exploit the value of internet-of-things data,” said Concirrus CEO Andrew Yeoman.

“This capability fundamentally adjusts the insurance market and transforms loss ratios through the selection and management of risk.

“We are pleased to continue to work closely with Touchstone Innovations and its focus on building fundamentally strong businesses with high quality management teams and a deep technology focus.”

Kelsey Lynn Skinner, Director of technology ventures at Touchstone Innovations, added that Concirrus had made “significant progress” in bringing new insight into the insurance market to improve loss ratios.

“For example, one of their leading customers is now able to offer a product line in a previously ‘un-insurable’ market segment by leveraging internet-of-things data.

“As investors we are building an ICT portfolio to capitalise on opportunities created by new data insights and Concirrus is leading that charge for the London and global insurance markets.”