Ascend

Ascend is a financial operations platform built for the insurance industry, serving retail agencies, wholesalers, MGAs and carriers. Its product suite spans billing and invoicing, premium financing and payments, cash application, carrier payables, and direct bill automation, covering the workflow the company describes as "collection to close." The platform automates invoice creation, delivery and collections; finances and collects premiums; matches bank deposits to accounting entries; reconciles and disburses carrier payables; and fetches, reconciles and posts commission statements so accounting teams can close their books.

The platform integrates with agency management systems (AMS) and policy administration systems (PAS) so customers can adopt it without replacing existing systems, and resolves accounts receivable and accounts payable into a shared accounting layer for consistent balances and reporting. AI models parse financial documents to support billing accuracy and reconciliation while retaining human review. Ascend also publishes developer documentation covering APIs for programs, billables, contacts, installment plans, transactions, invoices, payouts, refunds, and reference data such as carriers, coverage types and wholesalers, alongside a customer knowledge base organized by retail agency, MGA/wholesale, partner, integrations and product-module topics.

At its 2022 Series A, Ascend described itself as a modern insurance payments platform offering payments APIs and no-code products that automate insurance payments end to end, from an online point of sale with buy-now-pay-later premium financing through the distribution of commissions and carrier payables. It was then operating nationally in all 50 states.

Founding story

Ascend was co-founded by Praveen Chekuri (Co-Founder, CEO) and Andrew Wynn (Co-Founder, President), who had previously co-founded an insurtech together that was acquired by Hippo Insurance. Chekuri previously held engineering roles at Houseparty (acquired by Epic Games) and Instacart; Wynn worked in product management and operations at Looker Data Sciences (acquired by Google) and Instacart. The company frames its mission as rebuilding the financial and accounting infrastructure underlying an industry that moves trillions of dollars through manual, fragmented processes.

Business model

Ascend sells a vertically integrated software platform to insurance distributors and carriers, combining accounting automation software with payments processing and premium finance lending. Deployment involves a discovery phase, implementation with connections to the customer's AMS and PAS, configuration of billing, financing and reconciliation workflows, and ongoing onboarding support from dedicated customer success managers who report quarterly on progress.

Ascend combines software for billing, reconciliation and payables with payments and premium financing; premium finance loans originated through the platform have been funded via a lending commitment facilitated by Hudson Structured Capital Management (HSCM Bermuda).

Traction

Over 4,000 insurance businesses use the platform, including more than half of the 50 largest brokers. Published customer outcomes include ISU Steadfast saving 40+ hours per week on direct bill reconciliation, Pathpoint tripling appointments after offering direct bill for E&S markets, The Baldwin Group completing a two-month transition for direct bill processing, and a customer cutting unapplied cash balances by more than half and cash reconciliation time from 8 days to 3 while processing over 2,400 statements per month. In January 2022, Ascend reported operating in all 50 states, average transaction value of nearly $10,000, 61% of transactions being premium finance loans, 33% of checkouts converting to a transaction, and financing adoption rising from under 40% to 80% for some customers.

Latest developments

Ascend announced an agreement to merge with Honor Capital, described as creating a complete financial operations platform for insurance, and was named ARM International's exclusive accounting automation partner. The company is hiring across capital markets, customer success, marketing, product, sales, support and engineering.