RENO, NV, Talage, a SaaS-based digital insurance platform, today announced that it has closed $5 million in Series A funding led by Merus Capital, with participation from Calibrate Ventures, WTI and Hallador Investment Advisors. All are existing investors, with the exception of Calibrate Ventures. The new funds will be used to scale the company's engineering and business development teams, as customer demand continues to grow.

Founded in 2015 by Adam Kiefer, Matt Donovan and Zachary Draper, Talage's platform enables small business owners to easily purchase essential commercial coverage from agents online. The SaaS-based software streamlines the manual and often tedious task of selling coverage, enabling significant cost and time savings for insurance agents. Today, agents are using the technology to improve the economics of their small business books, and carriers are working with Talage to provide this tool to their agents.

"Our partnerships with top-rated insurance carriers and agents have enabled us to grow significantly within the last few years," said Adam Kiefer, co-founder and CEO at Talage. "We're thrilled to partner with Merus and other top venture capital firms as we enter the next phase of the business, with further growth of our technical and business development teams. The new funding will enable us to bring our SaaS solution to even more customers, continuing to innovate the way small businesses buy insurance."

"Adam, Matt and Zachary recognized early on that players in the insurance value chain need to invest heavily in modern technology platforms in order to maximize the yield of their digital distribution channels, particularly when serving the small business segment," said Peter Hsing, co-founder and managing director at Merus Capital. "We're excited to partner with Talage -- an exceptional team going after a large market with a technology solution that will change the basis of competition in the insurance industry."

The Talage platform is now live across the country, having sold over $1 million in insurance coverage to businesses in over 40 states via its solution. Last year, the company announced a key partnership with AF Group, a premier provider of insurance solutions. The partnership further expanded Talage's reach by offering a technically-savvy solution to agents of CompWest and Accident Fund for policy distribution.

"Talage offers forward-thinking technology that provides more advanced tools to enable our agent channels," said Abel Travis, Vice President of Underwriting & Innovation at AF Group. "We believe that Insurtech will bring the most value when combined with our existing agents - allowing them to reach more clients digitally, in a space largely occupied by small business customers."

About Talage
Talage is a SaaS-powered digital purchasing platform for small business insurance. Talage powers a digital check out for agents, allowing them to improve the profitability of their book of small business insurance. The platform takes advantage of Talage's 12 carrier partnerships, allowing agents to instantly sell coverage under their licenses and appointments via any digital channel. To learn more, visit http://www.talageins.com.