Coinbase Backs $2 Million Seed Round in Insurtech Firm Nayms

By Andrew Asmakov

London-based insurtech startup Nayms has closed a £1.5 million ($2 million) seed round led by XBTO.

Other investors include Coinbase Ventures, Maven11, and Insurtech Gateway. According to a press release shared with Decrypt, the latter is an existing investor in Nayms and co-founded the project together with the CEO, Dan Roberts.

Insurtech—short for "insurance technology"—is a broad category of constantly changing technologies used in the insurance industry. Broadly speaking, any technology used by an insurance company to increase the efficiency of its operations could be considered insurtech.

Nayms, which has earlier graduated from the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) sandbox, applies insurtech to the world of digital assets, allowing investors to collateralize cryptocurrency risks such as electronic theft or phishing attacks with the help of smart contracts.

According to the company’s website, its traceable smart contract is built on a trustless system, meaning insurance brokers can place a contract between market participants in a limitless number of areas and share in the future value of such open trade.

“Nayms is on a mission with our ecosystem of investors, partners, advisors and our growing team to provide brokers with a tradable, transparent, traceable and trusted insurance contract for this emerging risk category of digital assets,” said CEO Dan Roberts in a statement.

One of Nayms’ clients, crypto investment and trading platform Coinlist, is involved in the company's first pilot, a digital insurance contract placed by Breach Insured and covered by MakerDAO, another investor in the London startup.

Through its partnership with Nayms, Breach Insured is capable of covering complex digital asset risks at scale, said the company’s CEO Eyhab Aejaz.

Using the Dai stablecoin to collateralize smart insurance contracts, Nayms is also looking to apply its tech to the wider insurance market. To achieve this goal, Nayms is planning a number of larger pilot programs, including the one with SafetyWing, a platform offering travel medical and global health insurance for remote companies and individuals.

With the secured funding and equipped with a full regulatory license, the company is now preparing for a full launch later in 2021 and a Series A funding round in Q1 2022, hoping to substantially grow its customer base and have capital market integrations prior to that.

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