The Texas Office of the Commissioner of Insurance has given insurtech startup Honeycomb approval to write policies statewide. The digital insurer has built proprietary technology specifically for the estimated hundreds of thousands of multifamily property units in the Lone Star State.
The occupancy rate for multifamily properties in Texas is among the nation’s highest, at 91.6% in Austin, 92.2% in San Antonio, 90.9% in Dallas-Fort Worth and 91.4% in Houston, according to the Texas Quarterly Apartment Report. Yet this segment of the commercial property insurance market continues to lag significantly in its adoption of digital technology, Honeycomb observed. The state’s approval of Honeycomb for owners and landlords of apartment buildings, condo complexes, and multi-family homes sets up a solution.
Fresh off a Series A funding round of $15.4 million, Honeycomb offers Israeli-engineered technology that eliminates the need for on-site physical inspections to assess risk, utilizing instead satellite imagery, computer vision, artificial intelligence and machine learning. As a result, the arduous, weeks-long quote process that has long frustrated landlords and homeowners associations and the brokers who serve them is finally coming to an end, the company said.
“We’re looking forward to helping Texas landlords, home and condo associations, and owners overcome the friction they encounter when seeking insurance,” said Itai Ben-Zaken, Honeycomb co-founder and CEO. “There are hundreds of thousands of multi-family housing units in the state that can benefit from technology that produces real-time bindable quotes and more robust underwriting at a lower cost than previously possible.”
Honeycomb began writing insurance policies in the U.S. in June 2021. It now operates in seven states — Texas, Illinois, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania — with plans to launch in seven more this year, covering 60% of the country. The company today insures more than $1 billion of real estate assets.
