Inclined Technologies, a fintech startup that lends against whole life insurance policies, has raised $8 million in a Series B funding round, the company told Crunchbase News exclusively.
HSCM Ventures led the financing, which also included participation from Northwestern Mutual and other new and existing backers. The raise brings San Francisco-based Inclined’s total funding to $31 million. The company did not disclose its valuation, saying only that the Series B was raised “at a premium” to its $16.5 million Series A.
In 2020, Strava co-founder Mark Shaw teamed up with Josh Wyss and Graham Gerlach to start Inclined, his third company. He’d previously founded insurance software startup Guidewire Software, which ended up going public in 2012. Shaw joined activity and fitness tracking platform Strava as a co-founder in 2009 to lead engineering as CTO.
The goal with Inclined, he said, is to digitize many of the traditional time-intensive operations involved in the process of lending against whole life insurance policies.
Shaw concedes that insurance may not be considered among the sexiest of industries, particularly in the age of AI. But in his view, Inclined is able to do something that has historically been reserved for the wealthy: open up the option to borrow against whole life insurance policies to more people.
Whole life insurance policies differ from term life in that they accumulate value that is available permanently, rather than just paying for coverage. Shaw, who serves as Inclined’s CTO, likens it to buying versus renting a home.
And when whole life policyholders want to access their cash value, they often choose to do so via a loan, rather than withdrawing the money directly, which is less efficient, he explains.
This gives banks a way to better participate in the market at scale, according to Shaw. And because banks often have “much lower rates than insurance companies,” he explained, that means borrowers get to borrow at lower interest rates. Plus, their money can be compounded over decades.
Inclined’s flagship product is called “iLOC” and is a revolving line of credit collateralized by the cash value accumulated within a whole life insurance policy. It’s offered through advisers of insurance carriers that Inclined is partnered with, including Northwestern Mutual, MassMutual and Guardian Life.
No recurring interest payments are required, there are no late-payment penalties, and no fees are charged to borrowers, according to Wyss, who serves as the company’s CEO.
People “are essentially borrowing from themselves,” he said. Many people access the money they have built up in these policies to do things like make investments, pay for education or fund other large purchases such as real estate.
“They can access this liquidity during their lifetime,” Wyss told Crunchbase News. “It’s not just something used after a person dies.”
Insurtech funding sees choppy funding
Inclined’s funding follows several years of declining venture investment in insurance and insurtech startups but a more recent uptick, Crunchbase data shows.
Last year, such startups raised some $4.5 billion globally, down from $6.3 billion in 2023 and $9.5 billion in 2022. In 2021 — the peak year for global venture funding — insurance-related startups raised close to $19 billion worldwide, per Crunchbase data. But through the first half of 2025, those startups have raised nearly $4.3 billion, putting them on pace to top last year and 2023.
Inclined’s rapid growth
Since Inclined’s founding, more than $1 billion of credit has originated on its platform, its co-founders said. While they declined to reveal hard revenue figures, they told Crunchbase News that the company’s annual recurring revenue is “up more than 50x” since it last raised in September 2022, for a compound annual growth rate of 318%.
Because of its B2B2C model, Inclined has a few different types of customers. Over 2,000 insurance professionals recommend and sell its iLOC product to their policyowner customers who want to access the cash they have built up in their policies. It has about 3,500 whole life policyowners who are using the iLOC product.
The company makes money primarily through fees paid by its banking partners.
When asked why the startup opted to raise less money in its Series B than it did in its Series A, Wyss said the company was “just being judicious” about the amount of capital it needed.
“We felt like this was the right amount of capital to get to the next milestones of the company,” he said. “And, partnering with Northwestern Mutual and getting them on the cap table was a big part of this, too.”
Inclined plans to use its new capital mostly to “invest in sales,” and grow its engineering team, according to Shaw.
Craig Schedler, vice president of venture and corporate development at Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, told Crunchbase News via email that Inclined’s technology platform will help enable its policyowners “to understand and optimize the value of their whole life insurance policies, helping them manage their financial lives and have greater access to the living benefits of their Northwestern Mutual policy.”
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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