August 1, 2024
AUSTIN, Texas – January 11, 2022 – The Helper Bees, a full-service insurtech company that creates innovative aging-in-place solutions for both payers and insureds, has secured $12.8 million in Series B funding led by Trust Ventures, with additional support from Silverton Partners, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, Impact Engine, and Congress Avenue Ventures.
The new round of funding comes on the heels of The Helper Bees’ significant growth in recent months. This includes increasing revenue by 3x in just over a year and increasing their team size by 8x.
The Helper Bees enables older adults who want to age independently at home to do so with support of their insurance carriers. They accomplish this through advanced data analytics and tech-enabled services to streamline the insurance claims process and experience, which drives significant cost savings for Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) and Medicare Advantage (MA) carriers. Through its second company acquisition, healthAlign, earlier this year, The Helper Bees entered the Medicare Advantage market just as MA plans were expanding their in-home service offerings to create a more meaningful aging-in-place solution for plan members.
According to an AARP study, 90% of aging Americans would prefer to remain in their own homes rather than move to a nursing home or assisted living facility. To meet this new demand, The Helper Bees convened a network of in-home service providers onto a single delivery platform. Powered by healthAlign’s compliance technology, the network includes a wide range of aging-in-place services from home modification to pest control, and includes thousands of quality providers across the U.S. Importantly, The Helper Bees has vetted every vendor according to a proprietary credentialing process that aligns with Medicare standards and ensures provider compliance with ever-changing federal, state, and local regulations. The result is a curated network of trusted providers who understand the needs of older adults.
Using its network and technology platform, The Helper Bees can easily deploy a range of services into the home. The result is that older adults can access vetted vendors directly through the Aging-in-Place Marketplace, which serves as an e-commerce platform for services that support independent aging. The Helper Bees platform provides carriers with a singular tool for complete and simplified administration, dramatically increasing their ability to scale their in-home offerings.
“Because all of these aging-in-place services live on the same platform, payers have access to standardized data and next-level insights,” said Char Hu, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of The Helper Bees. “When combined with our industry-leading digital claims tools, the two-way data stream allows for a completely personalized aging experience. This means that The Helper Bees is in a position to understand aging-in-place in America better than any other provider. We have started to use this aggregated data around utilization and efficacy to inform future targeted interventions to empower aging in place.”
The importance of a robust regulatory framework to serve the aging-in-place population is one of the reasons The Helper Bees selected Trust Ventures to lead their Series B funding. Trust’s support team and investment mandate is designed to help companies compete in some of the most entrenched and incumbent-heavy industries by helping to build relationships, navigate regulatory challenges, and advocate for change.
“The Helper Bees’ platform is about giving the flexibility for seniors to live in independence and comfort, which is something the majority of them want but far fewer are able to maintain as they age. Today, older folks end up losing their independence because of complexity – it’s hard to access these disparate services within a broken and myopic healthcare system governed by a web of complex regulations. The Helper Bees brings together a fragmented market of services, each of which alone doesn’t fully unlock a senior’s independence, but together they represent something you can’t put a price on,” said Salen Churi, General Partner at Trust Ventures. “The Helper Bees is helping seniors stay in control of their lives and living on their terms, which is even more essential as more people begin to retire. We are proud to support The Helper Bees team as they promote and expand their platform, which has the potential to reinvigorate the industry and transform aging in place.”
The Helper Bees will use the Series B funds to expand its Aging-in-Place Marketplace services and delivery to reach a wider variety of aging Americans, regardless of who ultimately pays for the services. While insurance carriers find tremendous utility in deploying the Aging-in-Place Marketplace to reduce claims costs and increase member satisfaction, other organizations have increasingly become interested in the value of the Marketplace. For example, employers and organizations that want to provide their constituents with easy access to services that help those who are caring for a loved one as they age.
With these diverse needs in mind, The Helper Bees Aging-in-Place Marketplace allows for flexible planning of in-home service delivery – introducing insureds, employees and families to an unprecedented one-stop-shop experience that enables aging-in-place.