FRANK reaches €2.9M in total investment
FRANK closes a round with Armilar and Start Ventures to expand its AI Operator for insurance brokerages.
· FRANK · English
The Portuguese insurtech closes a round with Armilar and Start Ventures to expand its AI Operator, an artificial intelligence assistant that carries out the administrative work of insurance brokers.
Lisbon, October 1, 2026. FRANK, a Portuguese insurtech founded in December 2024, has raised €2.9 million to eliminate the administrative work that holds back the growth of insurance brokerages.
The problem
A single quote request for a home insurance policy, following up on a claim, or updating a client's address can eat up a broker's precious time across emails and insurers' portals, each with its own login, forms and rules. It is this work that today limits how well brokers can follow up with clients and grow their business, a problem that, according to António Castro, co-founder and CEO of FRANK, consumes most of a broker's working day.
> "Most brokers spend 80% of their time on back-office tasks instead of being with clients," says António Castro. "Brokers need to be freed from operational work so they can focus on risk advisory and on their clients, bring more insurance literacy to consumers, and help protect people better."
The solution: the AI Operator
To solve this problem, FRANK has built what it calls an AI Operator, a virtual assistant that replicates human action across insurance brokerage systems and portals. It integrates contact channels such as email or WhatsApp, reads documents, immediately identifies the process at hand, flags any missing data to the broker, logs into the relevant systems and portals, enters the necessary information, and returns the final result to the broker: whether that's a commercial quote or the status of a claim.
FRANK in numbers
The platform today counts more than 350 agencies/brokerages and over 1,500 users across the country, having started commercializing less than 12 months ago. Brokers report freeing up an average of around ten administrative hours per broker per week, and FRANK now handles 70,000 back-office tasks a month.
> "We hear from several clients who say good morning and thank you to FRANK as if it were a team member, and we see usage every day of the week, during and outside working hours," says Carlos Siqueira, FRANK's head of commercial.
Beyond saving time, FRANK helps brokers deliver a faster, round-the-clock service and makes it easier to manage client relationships, contributing to better protection for end clients and to organic growth for brokers' businesses.
The team
The team today numbers 20 people, with more than ten years of average experience in insurance and technology, and backgrounds at Lovys, JPMorgan, McKinsey, SAP, Accenture, FiveAI, Indie Campers and Bolt. FRANK was founded by António Castro, Ricardo Vallejo and Alexandre Silva, three longtime friends who combined their experience in insurance, artificial intelligence and technology to bring a new value proposition to the sector.
Where the investment goes
The newly raised capital will be deployed on three fronts.
1. The first is strengthening support for brokers: the FRANK team recognizes it wouldn't be here without the trust, support and partnership of its clients. The client focus will continue, so that clients feel every day that FRANK delivers more, and better.
2. The second priority is consolidating the product through research and development. Most of the investment will fund FRANK's continued training, making it scalable, hard to replicate and indispensable for brokers.
3. The third front is preparing for international expansion. The goal for 2027 is to begin launching international across geographies. For now, the company is focused on preparing its team, product and processes for that bigger step, with the ambition of becoming a "Portuguese champion" abroad once it has consolidated the domestic market.
What the investors say
> "Insurance brokers spend much of their day on manual back-office processes, instead of focusing on protecting their clients better. That's the problem FRANK was built to solve," says Inês de Macedo Santos, Principal at Armilar.
"We've known António since his time as CFO at Lovys, a French insurtech that sells insurance 100% online and uses technology to reach clients directly. After that experience, António wanted to do the opposite: put technology at the service of brokers, to make them more efficient and more digital. We were excited to see him bring that knowledge to FRANK, alongside a team with real technological depth."
Early traction confirms the thesis: brokers, some with an international presence, already use FRANK in their daily operations in Portugal.
> Nuno Marques Afonso, Associate at Start Ventures, says: "We invested in FRANK before it had a single client. Since then, we've watched one of the most conservative sectors we know adopt it at a pace we rarely see in insurtech. New brokers are emerging that are built from day one with artificial intelligence at the center of their operations, with quotes, claims and paperwork handled by machines from the outset. FRANK lets any established broker work the same way, without having to start from scratch."
What clients say
That traction shows in how clients use FRANK every day. At Verspieren Portugal, for instance, which now has more than a hundred employees, the need for a faster response at its points of sale, where customer service is intense, led the team to adopt FRANK.
"We now have an artificial colleague, FRANK, working alongside us every day," says Tânia Cardoso, of business development management at Verspieren Portugal.
At Carlos Marques Seguros, director André Marques describes a quick and now well-established adoption: "We quickly subscribed to FRANK. We've been using it for three or four months now, and we already treat it as part of our team. We're improving with FRANK, working in a faster, more optimized way."
For broker Ana Simões, the gain lies mainly in less time spent on insurers' portals: "I expected to cut down on time spent on operational tasks, mostly spent on insurers' portals. That time has already gone down, and I can handle several client requests at once, since I can launch multiple tasks simultaneously on FRANK, which gives me more time for my clients."
About Armilar
Founded in 2000, Armilar is a venture capital firm headquartered in Lisbon that currently manages more than €500 million in assets. Armilar has built a strong reputation investing in disruptive, early-stage technology companies with strong technological differentiation, helping them become "global winners" in their categories. With a solid track record and an international presence, Armilar invests in companies across Portugal, Spain, the rest of Europe and the United States.
About Start Ventures
Start Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm headquartered in Lisbon that invests globally in B2B startups innovating in fintech and insurtech. Founded in 2016 out of BiG and managed by Onetier Partners SCR, it has backed more than 20 teams, with four exits to date, and its portfolio companies have raised more than $365 million from global investors. Start Ventures works closely with founders, from ideation to exit, bringing sector expertise and an extensive network in the financial industry.