YuLife picks up $120M at an $800M valuation for gamified, wellness-focused life insurance

YuLife originally made a name for itself in its home market of the U.K. for its new approach to the provisioning of life insurance: yes, sell a policy that provides financial security to your people in the event of your death; but do so with a focus on improving the policyholder’s current life with wellness opportunities, and encourage use of that with gamification — a model that not only is aimed at benefitting the policyholders more, but increases engagement on the platform and provides a complementary revenue for YuLife, which offers deals on the wellness services.

Its idea took off — it is now used by more than 500 businesses, including Co-op, Del Monte, Jaguar Land Rover, Santander and CapitalOne, which in turn provide plans to their employees, one of three of whom engage on the app daily. On the heels of that, now the company is announcing that it has raised $120 million to expand the concept. Today, YuLife covers group life insurance, critical illness protection and income protection, but it is now rapidly expanding to new categories like dental and health, as well as financial services (pensions being one example of a category that has a strong affinity with life insurance), as well as to new markets like the U.S.

The funding, a Series C, is bringing a new strategic investor on board, Japan’s Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, which is leading the round, along with participation from previous investors Creandum, LocalGlobe, Target Global, Latitude, Anthemis, OurCrowd, Notion, MMC and Eurazeo.

CEO and co-founder Sammy Rubin tells us that this latest fundraise values the company at $800 million. For some context on that figure, when YuLife more recently raised money before this — a Series B of $70 million in 2021 — it was valued at $346 million.

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