Bestow expects to hire up to 150 this year after doubling its revenue in 2021 – The Dallas Morning News

Dallas-based insurance industry disruptor Bestow plans to hire up to 150 more workers this year as it looks to build on strong revenue growth over the past couple of years.

The life insurance platform doubled its revenue year-over-year in 2021, it said this week. The company has attributed its growth, in part, to trends amplified by the pandemic and its ability to penetrate a younger consumer base than traditional life insurance products.

Founded in 2016 by Melbourne O’Banion and Jonathan Abelmann, Bestow’s product is a fully digital life insurance offering that uses artificial intelligence to help customers secure a plan in minutes on their phones with no medical exams needed. With $145 million in funding to date, Bestow landed a spot on CNBC’s Top 50 Disruptors list for the first time last year, coming in at No. 35.

The company wants to expand its workforce from 235 to nearly 400 by the end of 2022. It’s hiring for positions across the entire organization, including software engineers, customer service, finance and insurance professionals in what chief executive O’Banion calls another “expansion year.” The company recently brought on two new executives — chief insurance officer Jeremy Bill and chief marketing officer Ben Armstrong.

Bestow said in September that it planned to hire an additional 70 staffers before the end of 2021. That hiring push capped a busy year for the company that saw it strike a partnership with financial adviser Equitable and another that landed it on fintech unicorn Lemonade’s platform.

And Bestow’s $2.3 million acquisition of Centurion Life Insurance Co., which closed in 2021, gave the company license to be its own insurance carrier in almost every state in the U.S.

O’Banion sees a path to profitability for Bestow, but that’s not the focus today as the company is in “build mode,” he told The Dallas Morning News Tuesday.

“We have a very bold plan not only for our products and partners and our customers, but also for our team,” O’Banion said.

Currently, the company has about 30 job openings posted. O’Banion said Bestow prefers to hire locally in Dallas and Austin where it has offices but is open to hiring remote workers as well.

With its acquisition of Centurion, Bestow also set up a third office in Iowa, where Centurion is headquartered. O’Banion said that office will be growing, too.

Bestow is moving offices to The Stack in Deep Ellum, where it’s leasing two floors, each measuring around 28,000 square feet. The company hopes to complete that transition in the third quarter of this year, O’Banion said.

“We’re going to maintain a hybrid model where we don’t require people to come in on an everyday basis, but we do want to draw people in and we think that’s a great place to do it,” he said.

Bestow plans to launch new products this year as well as improve its term life insurance product, though O’Banion isn’t giving too many hints.

“You won’t see us expand into other forms of insurance like pet or renter’s insurance,” he said. “You’ll see us move into more permanent life products and other protection and savings products around that life insurance space.”