Specifically, it will go public via INSU Acquisition Corp. II, a publicly traded SPAC sponsored by Cohen & Company.

Upon closing of the transaction, the combined company will be named Metromile Inc. and is expected to remain listed on NASDAQ under the new ticker symbol “MLE.

Founded in 2011, Metromile launched its personalized pay-per-mile auto insurance a year later. The company has raised $293 million in funding from the likes of NEA and Index Ventures. 

The premise behind Metromile is that if you don’t drive much, you shouldn’t have to pay as much for auto insurance as those who do drive a lot. Customers pay a base rate, and then pennies per mile, according to the company.

I spoke with Rick Chen, Metromile’s communications director, who said the insurtech is slated to go public in the first quarter of 2021.

He said that besides being an insurance provider, Metromile is a true technology play that also licenses out its underlying technology to large incumbents – a big revenue-generator for the company. It also has built car sensors and mobile APIs that it uses for phones and integrate directly with car manufacturers for connected vehicles.

“All this telematics data helps us understand risk moment-by-moment,” Chen told FinLedger. “Typical insurance companies rely on decades of data to figure out th erisk of each driver and policy. How they price is from taking a look back. For us, we see it more in real-time. We’re an insurance company built for the future.”

The company asserts that its AI claims system, called AVA, is the “first of its kind system” designed to accelerate the process of verifying and paying out insurance claims.

Metromile said the data it is able to extract gives it the ability to do things such as reconstruct the scene of an accident to instantly determine if claim details are accurate. The company also says it can automatically approve payments once a claim is verified.

Read the full article here: Finledger