A year after its first major equity funding raise, Halifax-based QuickFacts has closed a $2 million oversubscribed round led by Sandpiper Ventures on the back of strong user growth.

Also among the round’s investors are Mark Dobbins’ Killick Capital; Paul Hill, the former chair of cybersecurity unicorn Verafin; VC shop InsurTech NY; and several other longtime investors and executives in the IT space. Last year, the company raised $1.13 million.

The money is earmarked to fund its already-underway expansion across Canada and a push into the U.S. The company is planning a staged approach, with New York to come early in the process thanks to InsurTech NY connections in the market.

“The way our software is set up, it uses regional information — state-to-state, province-to-province information — and displays that depending on where the (insurance) customer is that the brokerage is trying to service,” said Chief Revenue Officer Jeff Barsalou in an interview Thursday.

Co-founded by Christy and Jeff Barsalou, with Christy running point as CEO, QuickFacts offers a platform that lets brokers view insurance packages from competing companies side by side for easy comparison. The company says it can reduce the time brokers spend searching for information by 10 to 20 times. It also says the platform offers brokers more depth of information than competitors.

"U.S. brokerages are experiencing similar pain points to Canadian brokerages, but on a much larger scale due to the sheer size of the market and state differences,” said Christy Barsalou in a statement.

“That's why technology is imperative for brokers to keep pace with rapid carrier information changes, ensuring they deliver accurate, up-to-date advice to clients, ultimately enhancing efficiency and service quality."

QuickFacts has tripled its active users over the past year, for a total of more than 2,500 users across about 100 brokerages. After a pilot in Atlantic Canada, QuickFacts launched in Ontario in 2022, Alberta in 2023 and the other provinces this year, except for Quebec, which will come slightly later because of differences in industry practices.

So far, the company has 19 employees, including a handful of recent hires, with plans to add several more staff to help with the U.S. rollout, as well as bilingual employees to focus specifically on Quebec.

"We are focusing on an upcoming launch for commercial insurance lines,” said Jeff Barsalou, using the industry term for different verticals within insurance. “We currently do personal and high value, but we’re focusing on getting the commercial lines out, as well as agricultural.

“That would round out the property and casualty markets that we’re currently providing our service to.”

In addition to the insurance quote software, QuickFacts also sells software for brokers to use throughout their workflows. Unlike the underwriting comparison software that displays jurisdiction-specific information, the “workflow software” is largely location-agnostic.

“That one, we could just launch it across the U.S.,” Jeff Barsalou said. “But we’ve got a bit of a different planned approach with that one. We’re building some partnerships for that right now.”