TheGuarantors Gets Guaranteed $50 Million Funding

NEW YORK — TheGuarantors, a fintech company building smart financial and insurance solutions for renters and landlords, has raised $50 million in series C equity funding. The round was led by Portage Ventures, with participation from Kensington Capital Partners, Arch Capital Group Ltd., and Roosh Ventures, as well as earlier investors including Alven. The newly injected capital will allow TheGuarantors to expand its product offerings and team.

Launched in 2015, TheGuarantors is working to improve renting affordability and accessibility for millions of American households. The 46 million American households renting their homes have a collective $65B locked away in security deposits. Additionally, the company estimates that five million households will struggle to get approved for a new rental unit this year based on their finances.

“I founded TheGuarantors to address the fundamental human need for housing,” said Julien Bonneville, CEO of TheGuarantors. “We have enabled renters across the country to move into the apartment of their dreams, we’ve used machine learning to fairly assess the true risk of those with low or no credit score, and we’ve allowed cash strapped renters to have more money on hand when moving in.”

TheGuarantors also recently formed its own licensed insurance company, making it the first venture backed company in its category to insure its own risk. Its highly diversified risk holding profile will further TheGuarantors’ product innovation agility and market expansion.

“On the back of strong underwriting and leading products, TheGuarantors has become one of the largest players in its space. We’re excited to partner with the company as they expand nationally,” said Adam Felesky, CEO at Portage Ventures.

The company says it has more than doubled its revenue each year since inception and tripled its revenue in 2021, fueled by explosive adoption among landlords and the renters they serve. To date, TheGuarantors has partnered with landlords representing approximately three million units nationwide and has $1.5 billion in rent protected and deposits guaranteed.

TheGuarantors offers two flagship products:

• Lease Guarantee, which is a tech-enabled tenant default protection product allowing renters to qualify for the unit they want, and;
• Security Deposit Replacement, which acts as a direct and highly affordable substitute to a cash security deposit.

In both cases, the renter pays a small upfront or monthly fee and TheGuarantors insures the landlord for lost rent and/or damages. This model has proven to be mutually beneficial for both the landlord who improves Net Operating Income and the renter who gets to live in the unit of their choice while having extra cash on hand at move-in.

Properties offer TheGuarantors’ products as a benefit to their residents, at zero cost to the landlord. “TheGuarantors has become the first choice for property managers looking to improve financial and operational performance while bringing great value to renters,” said Chad Cooley, Managing Director at Bozzuto.

TheGuarantors plans to quadruple the size of its engineering team and aggressively hire across product, sales and marketing functions in 2022.