Full-Time
Director of Finance
Modern Life
51-200 employees
Life insurance brokerage platform for advisors
Compensation Overview
$200k - $240k/yr
New York, NY, USA
In Person
Four days on-site per week required.
Bachelor's, MBA
 Finance & Banking (1) |
|---|
Get referred to Modern Life
See people who can refer or advise you
- At least 7 years of strategic finance or financial planning and analysis experience, ideally in high-growth startup finance.
- Experience owning budgeting, forecasting, and financial modeling, with a track record of driving financial performance against targets.
- Ability to perform detailed commission-level analysis while maintaining a strategic perspective.
- Ability to operate as the sole finance owner, manage an outsourced accounting firm, and perform hands-on finance work as needed.
- Ability to communicate and lead effectively while collaborating across departments and with external stakeholders, including carriers, accountants, and investors.
- A Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics, or a related field.
- Own and expand the company financial model, linking key business drivers to company goals and informing leadership and board planning.
- Drive the annual budgeting and ongoing reforecasting cycles, working with every team to connect resource allocation to strategic goals.
- Prepare materials and analysis for fundraising, investor updates, and strategic partnerships.
- Own the relationship with the outsourced accounting partner, oversee month-end close and accounts payable and accounts receivable using Ramp, and ensure timely and accurate financial reporting.
- Build the management and board reporting cadence covering business performance, unit economics, and runway.
- Partner with the CEO and Head of People on headcount planning, compensation modeling, staffing ratios, and unit economics that inform organizational design decisions.
- Oversee the commission engine, including carrier commission structures and margins, advisor payout tiers, weekly commission processing, and reporting for advisors and carriers.
- Use artificial intelligence tooling to automate reporting, analysis, and finance workflows.
- Experience with insurance, brokerage, or commission-based revenue models.
- A foundation in management consulting or investment banking.
- An MBA in Finance, Accounting, or Economics.
- A Certified Public Accountant credential.
Modern Life is a life insurance technology platform that supports insurance advisors by giving them access to a broad range of life insurance products from 30 national carriers. It offers both permanent and term life insurance and uses technology to streamline the process of finding and presenting tailored coverage. Advisors can compare and quote policies efficiently, helping clients receive personalized solutions. The company earns commissions and fees from the policies sold through its platform. Unlike others, Modern Life pairs deep insurance expertise with a scalable tech platform and a wide carrier network to make the coverage search faster and more confident for both advisors and clients. Its goal is to help everyone find the right coverage at the best value with individualized attention.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Series A
Total Funding
$35M
Headquarters
New York City, New York
Founded
2021
Get referred to Modern Life
See people who can refer or advise you
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Modern Life closed a $20 million Series A in November 2025, bringing $35 million total.
- Its Express Decision system returns underwriting offers four times faster than traditional timelines.
- Prudential partnership expansion and 2026 public launch strengthen advisor-facing distribution credibility.
What critics are saying
- Ethos' January 2026 IPO validates a stronger, better-capitalized competitor.
- Carrier-owned investors like New York Life and Northwestern Mutual can pressure product access.
- If advisors adopt carrier-native AI tools, Modern Life loses its brokerage relevance entirely.
What makes Modern Life unique
- Modern Life bundles quoting, underwriting, planning, and operations into one advisor workflow.
- Its AI agents synthesize emails, PDFs, and spreadsheets into structured case data.
- Licensed in all 50 states, it distributes through advisors across 30 carriers.
Help us improve and share your feedback! Did you find this helpful?
Benefits
Health Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
Life Insurance
Disability Insurance
Remote Work Options
Paid Holidays
Company Equity
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↑ 1%1 year growth
↑ 0%2 year growth
↑ 3%Modern Life has launched an AI-driven platform to overhaul life insurance distribution, embedding artificial intelligence across the entire sales process. The system addresses fragmented legacy workflows by synthesising data from emails, PDFs and spreadsheets into structured insights whilst automating real-time tasks. The platform features embedded AI agents handling quoting, underwriting, planning and operations. It provides advisors with real-time case visibility, underwriting estimates, and reduces manual work whilst helping explain complex strategies as regulations evolve. Founded by Michael Konialian, Modern Life operates as a brokerage offering quotes from 30 carriers across all 50 US states. The company has raised $35 million in funding led by Thrive Capital, New York Life and Northwestern Mutual. The platform aims to eliminate friction whilst maintaining advisors as trusted client authorities.
Modern Life launches ai-driven brokerage platform. The platform embeds artificial intelligence across quoting, underwriting and case management to streamline life insurance distribution. Anthony R. O'Donnell // February 24, 2026 (Image source: Modern Life.) Modern Life (New York) has launched an artificial intelligence-driven platform designed to integrate quoting, underwriting, planning and operations workflows within life insurance distribution. The company says the system embeds AI across each stage of the sales process, enabling advisors to manage case requirements, underwriting estimates and policy structuring within a unified platform. Modern Life built the technology using internal insurance expertise to address complexities tied to underwriting judgment, financial optimization and long-term planning. "I've been building high-growth companies at the intersection of technology and insurance for a decade," says Michael Konialian, Founder, CEO, Modern Life. "We reinvented the modern brokerage by redesigning each function and replacing fragmented context with unified execution." According to Modern Life, the platform uses embedded AI agents to support carrier quoting, underwriting risk assessment, structured planning reviews and operational case monitoring. The company says the system synthesizes data from multiple sources into structured insights while advancing workflows in real time. Modern Life says advisors using the platform gain visibility into case requirements and underwriting considerations, including potential ratings and impairment factors. The company says the system is intended to reduce manual tasks, limit unexpected underwriting outcomes and identify planning opportunities as tax and financial regulations evolve. Modern Life operates as a life insurance brokerage licensed in all 50 states and reports raising $35 million in funding led by Thrive Capital, New York Life and Northwestern Mutual.
Modern Life raises $20M led by Thrive Capital to bring ai-driven underwriting to the $175B life insurance market. Life insurance isn't known for speed. Advisors and clients continue to face cycle times, dense paperwork, and underwriting rules that vary endlessly from carrier to carrier. It's one of the few financial products where closing a policy can still stretch across half a year. That's the gap insurance tech startup Modern Life has spent the past two years trying to close, and its progress just drew another major vote of confidence from investors. Today, Modern Life announced a new $20 million Series A round led by Thrive Capital, with support from New York Life Ventures, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, and Allegis. These are some of the largest insurers in the country, now throwing their weight behind a startup building tools that streamline the very industry they dominate. The raise brings Modern Life's total funding to $35 million. "We started Modern Life to solve a clear problem: we believe that advisors have an incredibly important job but face a complex and dizzying set of obstacles to serving their clients well," said Michael Konialian, Founder and CEO of Modern Life. The company positions itself as a modern brokerage built around an AI system that helps advisors manage everything from underwriting to product selection. Life insurance sits at the intersection of medical assessment, tax strategy, financial planning, and carrier-specific rules. The pressure on advisors is immense: they have to compare dozens of carriers, optimize long-term financial outcomes, and guide clients through complex medical requirements. With typical permanent life policies taking months to close, the industry has long been primed for a redesign. AI meets life insurance: insurtech startup Modern Life raises $20M to tackle a $175B market's complexity. Modern Life says its platform was built for this exact friction. Since its $15 million seed round - also led by Thrive - the company has rolled out instant quoting, data-driven underwriting, end-to-end agency management tools, and its Express Decision system, which can return underwriting offers four times faster than traditional timelines. Some clients can receive decisions in minutes. Thrive Capital partner Nabil Mallick framed the opportunity plainly: "Life insurance remains one of the biggest untapped opportunities in financial services. Modern Life is reimagining how the industry works by empowering advisors with cutting-edge, AI-powered tools, unlocking lasting value for the entire ecosystem." The U.S. life insurance market is huge - about $175 billion - and roughly 90% of policies are distributed through advisors. Those advisors often operate with a stack of outdated tools, manual workflows, and fragmented data. Modern Life's platform pulls all of that into a single system that handles quotes, applications, medical evidence, and client information. By embedding AI across each stage, the platform acts as a second brain for advisors, analyzing medical and financial data, surfacing the most competitive carriers, and supporting advisors as they weigh insurance, tax, and financial planning decisions. Founder and CEO Michael Konialian said the problem the company is solving became clear early on: "We believe that advisors have an incredibly important job, but face a complex and dizzying set of obstacles to serve their clients well. We have been pushing the frontier of what is possible in life insurance, integrating what would have otherwise been served by over 10 fragmented legacy tools into a singular platform. Our AI helps advisors navigate the most complex parts of the job - it's like having a medical underwriter, tax expert, financial planner, product specialist, and marketer at your side." New York Life Ventures shares that belief. Tim Del Bello, Head of Investments, said Modern Life's advantage comes from supporting the role of advisors rather than trying to replace them. "Our experience at New York Life Ventures points to a simple truth: advisors are essential to how life insurance is purchased. Modern Life has built its growth on this foundation, using AI to elevate what advisors do best - serving their clients." Modern Life now gives advisors access to more than 30 carriers and every major product type, from term and permanent life to annuities and long-term care. Its quoting engine can reduce hours of manual work to minutes. The company says its approach can save clients up to 20% through smarter product selection, underwriting expertise, and more precise case placement across carriers. Security is another area where Modern Life is trying to meet the industry's expectations. The platform is SOC 2 certified and built with enterprise-grade data protections to ensure advisors and their firms can handle sensitive information with confidence. Licensed in all 50 states, the company plans to use the new capital to scale its product, deepen its carrier partnerships, and continue building an AI system that can make life insurance feel less like a six-month paperwork slog and more like the modern financial service consumers expect.
Modern Life raises $20M in Series A funding. Modern Life, a NYC-based AI-powered life insurance company, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Thrive Capital, with participation from New York Life Ventures, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, and Allegis. The company intends to use the funds to further enhance its growth, expand strategic partnerships nationwide, and accelerate product development of its proprietary AI-driven platform. Led by Founder and CEO Michael Konialian, Modern Life is an AI-powered life insurance brokerage which aims to help financial professionals deliver better outcomes for their clients. Licensed in all 50 states, the company combines technology, AI-driven underwriting, and industry expertise to improve the insurance process. It allows advisors to compare quotes from over 30 carriers, access expert guidance, receive as soon as instant decisions, and manage cases.
/PRNewswire/ -- Modern Life, the AI-powered life insurance brokerage transforming how advisors serve their clients, announced today that it has raised $20...