Insurance fraud in France jumped 30% in a single year, climbing from €695 million in 2023 to €902 million in 2024, according to the French Insurance Fraud Prevention Agency. The culprit isn’t traditional fraud tactics—it’s generative AI tools that anyone can now access. While insurers scramble to adapt, a Toulouse-based trusttech startup, Certificall, raises seed funding of €1 million to block fraud at its source.
Certificall, founded in 2022 by insurtech specialists Guillaume Laurent and Nicolas Chabauty, just closed a seed round led by TomCat, Groupama, and InsurAngels. Certificall raises seed funding because the company provides certified visual evidence solutions for insurers, brokers, and large industrial clients, addressing a problem that’s only accelerating.
The fraud problem that AI made worse
France estimates that insurance fraud accounts for roughly 5% of property and casualty premiums. That’s a significant chunk of the insurance ecosystem being lost to fraudulent claims. What changed dramatically over the past few years is how accessible fraud tools have become, showing why Certificall raises seed funding to innovate against these issues.
“The increase in fraud in 2021-2022 was just the beginning,” explained Guillaume Laurent, Certificall’s president and co-founder. “Over the past two years, generative AI has become increasingly sophisticated and accessible to everyone. Certificall raises seed funding intending to block fraud at the source.”
Laurent isn’t exaggerating. Anyone with a smartphone can now generate convincing fake damage photos, manipulate timestamps, or fabricate evidence that would have required significant technical skill just three years ago. Traditional verification methods simply can’t keep pace with AI-generated fraud.
Certification architecture that actually holds up in court
Certificall’s approach tackles the evidence integrity problem through a technological architecture designed around four complementary pillars: geolocation verification, tamper-proof certificates, qualified time stamping, and the eIDAS signature seal. That last element is particularly significant for anyone operating across European borders.
The company has certified more than 3 million photos to date, with each report taking roughly 90 seconds on average. That speed matters when you’re dealing with claims adjusters who need to process dozens of cases daily while maintaining evidential standards.
The platform guarantees the probative value of each piece of evidence from the moment it’s captured, which is exactly what insurers need when disputed claims end up in court. Digital evidence that can’t be verified is useless evidence, regardless of how quickly it was collected.
European expansion at the right regulatory moment
Certificall’s positioning as a trusted third party fully compliant with eIDAS—the European regulation for electronic identification and trust services—gives the company a structural advantage as Europe pushes toward its digital identity goals. The EU targets 80% adoption of a digital identity wallet by 2030, and Certificall sits at the intersection of that initiative and the insurance sector’s fraud prevention needs.
eIDAS compliance ensures that every digital proof issued by Certificall is legally valid across the entire EU. For companies in document-sensitive sectors, this creates a reliable and compliant way to guarantee the integrity of digital evidence without navigating 27 different national frameworks.
The €1 million in new funding will support further technology development and accelerate commercial expansion across Europe. With investors like Groupama—one of France’s largest insurance groups—backing the company, Certificall raises seed funding to obtain both capital and strategic partnerships to scale its solution.
What this signals about European insurtech
Certificall’s raise reflects a broader trend I’ve watched develop across European insurance technology: the shift from efficiency tools to integrity infrastructure. Early insurtech focused on making insurance faster and cheaper, but now we see how Certificall raises seed funding to address fundamental trust problems that technology itself created.
The company is betting that as AI-generated fraud becomes more sophisticated, the market for certified, legally defensible evidence will expand beyond insurance into any sector handling high-value claims or disputes. Construction, logistics, and property management all face similar verification challenges.
For now, though, Certificall is laser-focused on the insurance market, where the fraud problem is quantified, urgent, and growing. That focus—combined with strong timing around Europe’s digital identity push—positions the company to capture significant market share before competitors can build comparable eIDAS-compliant solutions.
The fraud arms race isn’t slowing down. Certificall is betting that certified evidence infrastructure will become as essential to insurance operations as claims management software. Given the trajectory of AI-generated fraud, that’s looking like a solid bet.