Startups

Future Family takes in new capital as need for fertility treatments increases

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Future Family, Claire Tomkins
Image Credits: Drew Bird (opens in a new window) / Future Family CEO Claire Tomkins with her children

Less than a year after taking a small Series A extension, Future Family, a startup aiming to make fertility services, like IVF and egg freezing, more accessible, is back with $25 million in Series B funding.

Munich Re Ventures led the round and was joined by TriVentures, MS&AD Ventures and ORIX and existing investors Aspect Ventures, Mindset Ventures, at.inc/ and OurCrowd. The latest round gives the company $150 million in total funding, which includes $100 million in a credit facility announced in 2018.

We’ve covered Future Family now for nearly five years — you can read all about it here — and followed founder Claire Tomkins as she and her team set out to partner with clinics so that all of the pricing for procedures is worked out ahead of time and bills are paid upfront so there are no hidden or surprise costs.

The company offers 60-month loan plans that range between $300 and $475 per month and cover things like clinic procedures, lab work and medications.

In 2021, Tomkins told TechCrunch she expected a record amount of activity due to people waiting through the global pandemic to move forward with treatments. And that’s exactly what happened; the result was Future Family saw its gross transaction volume — the volume of patients it was financing — jump 300% in 2021. The company also doubled its headcount.

She expects an even faster pace of growth for this year and in 2023 as many people have now navigated the pandemic. She noted CDC statistics that show some 20% of Americans will need access to fertility care in coming years, and as people wait later in life to begin their families, 1 in 8 will experience age-related infertility. Most people finance a car, so for Tomkins, it is natural that with the average cost of an IVF cycle being $12,400 — similar to the cost of a car — people would want to finance fertility treatments.

The new funding will enable the Future Family to expand its network, invest in staffing and product development and explore new channels. Tomkins hinted that there would be more news in the second half of the year.

“We’d seen such a strong performance with the company growth and momentum, so we were interested in raising in the second half of last year,” Claire Tomkins, Future Family founder and CEO told TechCrunch. “It’s never been harder to start a family than in 2022 just between the age-related infertility and the cost of getting care is so high. Future Family offers a unique solution, a buy now, pay later for healthcare, that makes sense and has easy monthly plans.”

Demand for fertility services persists despite COVID-19 shutdowns

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