Drone insurance company Flock has raised more than £2.25 million in seed funding from an array of global fintech and insurtech investors, including venture capitalists Anthemists, Silicon Valley’s Plug and Play, Seed and Speed and London VC Downing Ventures.
The company launched the app “Flock Cover” in March this year where drone owners pay for insurance when needed; with a policies starting from just one hour and costing some £5 a day for commercial drone users. (For those who followed #dronecrashmas last Christmas, which chronicled gifted drones being promptly flown into log fires, lakes and the mouths of dogs, the need will be clear…)
Established in 2016 when founder Antton Peña and CEO Ed Leon Klinger published papers on drone flight risks at Imperial College London and Cambridge University, leading into the creation of their first product as they partnered up with German insurers Allianz to create Flock Cover.
The app aggregates real-time data by using hyperlocal weather conditions, population density, and proximity to high-risk areas (e.g. airports) while Flock’s algorithms analyse the data in milliseconds to identify possible risks of drone flights taking place.
It converts the quantified metric into an intelligently-priced insurance premium that allows drone flight pilots to purchase hourly insurance policies for their flights. Flock say that over 1,000 commercial drone pilots already use Flock Cover as a flexible, on-demand alternative to ‘flat-rate’ annual premiums.
Ed Leon Klinger, CEO of Flock said: “The drone industry is growing exponentially, and we’re just getting started. This investment provides us with the backing and expertise we need from world-renowned investors, to meet this growth by expanding our own operations globally.”
The funding round came as enterprise interest in drone use continues to grow, with applications including deliveries, disaster relief and more all being trialled. Other uses are less salubrious: as Computer Business Review recently reported, their use for commercial espionage is also on the rise.
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