How Technology is impacting the Insurance Industry

The Insurance Industry has been Slow to Adapt to Technology

Many people within the insurance industry say the industry has not evolved since the Industrial Revolution. In some ways that is a true statement. With the introduction of several different forms of technology the insurance industry is advancing into the twenty first century. Technology has and will play a large part of the insurance industry for the foreseeable future. The insurance industry has been slow to adapt, but there the best companies are now using technology to gain a competitive advantage in both personal and commercial insurance.

Human Brain, Technology, Artificial Intelligence

Types of Technology Impacting the Insurance Industry

Wearables

Wearables have evolved far beyond wristwatches and clip-on GPS trackers. Some companies are adding smart vests and even boot inserts to monitor employees. What businesses are monitoring include heart rate, body temperature, and even the sweat rate. This helps businesses prevent employees from suffering from heat stroke or hypothermia. Motion sensors are being used to detect when a worker has fallen or in some instances when an employee has not moved for a period of time. These wearable technologies can alert supervisors or nearby colleagues of a potential danger.

Drone Technology

Insurance companies are using drones in a number of ways. One of the best ways carriers are using drones is to speed up the claims process in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Carriers will send an underwriter to an area and inspect multiple damaged properties with the drone saving an enormous amount of time in the claims process. In some instances, the underwriter can begin to process a claim even before the owner of the property is allowed back in to the area. In the future, many within the industry think the industry could use drones to view a property periodically throughout the year to record the condition of a property prior to a claim. Like most things with technology and the insurance industry, this will create new types of risks and privacy issues.

Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous vehicles bring many different issues to the insurance industry. As autonomous vehicles work now, the insurance is held by the owner of the car. In the future, as autonomous vehicles move into other areas of the economy, the insurance industry will have to develop ways to deal with new types of risks. When a company like Uber or Lyft begin offering rides in unmanned vehicles, the liability insurance required will change. When a company like Amazon begins using unmanned vehicles for deliveries; the insurance industry, along with the states and federal government, will have to adjust how the liability involved in these vehicles develops.

Computer Technology

How is Technology Impacting the Insurance Industry

Underwriting and Claims are quicker and more efficient

Insurance is a very specific product to sell. The price for one business is dramatically different than another business for a number of reasons. Insurance agents need a lot of information about a business before they can offer a quote on premium. There are a number of reasons for this and it is a frustration for both agents, underwriters, and business owners looking for coverage. Technology is helping to streamline this process.

Technology adoption is helping to better identify fraud and other crimes

There are numerous ways insurance companies are using technology to improve the insurance process for all policyholders. No where is that more evident than when it comes to policing fraud. Wearables and smart home devices are helping insurance companies determine when someone is committing arson or when someone is lying about a crime. A good example of how technology is being used to cover up a crime is in Arkansas in 2015, man was suspected of murder. Using the Amazon Echo and the smart water heater, prosecutors found that a large amount of water was used in the early hours of the morning on the night of the murder. The prosecutors used this as circumstantial evidence to show the man was covering up the crime.

Technology

Technology Requires New Types of Coverage

Cyber Insurance

Cyber insurance is a necessary coverage for most business need in 2019. There are three types of policies that businesses may need. Cyber Liability and Data Breach Coverage are the two policies most businesses need and they are almost exclusively sold in tandem. The additional coverage some businesses need related to cyber insurance is Technology Errors and Omissions.

Data Breach Insurance deals with the first party damages to you and your business. Cyber liability deals with the third party liability a business faces to other people damaged by a data breach. Technology Errors and Omissions deals with businesses that provide or sell technology services and products. Thus far, carriers have had trouble understanding the risk factors related to cyber. For most policies, the carriers have years of historical loss information to determine the probability of claims. Most businesses have been operating over the internet for less than 10 years and a majority of that time they did not carry cyber insurance. Because of this lack of data, most insurance carriers either do not have a strong appetite for this coverage or they keep premium relatively high.

Drones and Aerial Photographs

Drones are helping the insurance industry process claims much quicker in disaster ridden areas.

In the wake of three devastating hurricanes this fall, many insurance carriers have begun to use drones and and other aerial vehicles to aide in the claims process. The use of drones have sped up the turn around time for claims processing dramatically.

Drones and Aerial Photographs

Unfortunately, this fall far too many small businesses are beginning to understand the need for protecting their small business with adequate insurance. These same business owners are also getting more familiar with the claims process between the business, the insurance agency and the insurance carrier. If they did not know before, they are becoming familiar with at this time, the fact of how crucial it is for a claim to be processed quickly. Getting victims back to everyday life can have an enormous impact on the communities impacted by natural disasters. This is what the insurance industry is striving to help the communities hurt by the hurricanes over the past few months.

Technology is helping in many ways. First, drones are helping carriers take both still photos and video to observe properties they are not physically able to visit. The carriers can use the information they get from drones, both in the form of aerial photographs and video, to create 3D images of the impacted area. Technology is now allowing them to do this at scale and determine what percentage of a property is destroyed without ever setting foot on the property. Now, this is not possible in all circumstances, but it is possible in many. Every case that is sped up, frees the adjusters to move on to other victims who desperately need help.

According to an article with the Insurance Journal, a recent KPMG (Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler) Survey found, “the two biggest challenges facing insurers are the difficulties in assessing property damage and managing customer expectations”. As a result of the same survey insurance executives overwhelmingly said, ‘To improve claims efficiency and communication with customers, insurance executives cited the use of drones as one of the technologies they will utilize to help quickly settle claims’. Drones are helping with these exact problems facing the insurance industry, by allowing those within the industry to show the victims, with pictures and video, what they are doing and how they are going about doing it.

Through the use of drones many companies within the industry are able to drastically speed up the processing time for claims by allowing the insurance claims processor to get a majority of the claims process done without the ability to physically visit the property. Once they are able to get out to the property, insurance professionals can use the drone to examine several properties in a particular area in a short amount of time. This allows the claims adjuster to spend a short amount determining what properties are most devastated and will need the most of his time. It can also allow the adjuster to determine if another property does not need any further observations on his part and free up time for him to observe other areas that are severely devastated.

This is just the tip of the iceberg for how this and other technologies will help the insurance industry, better serve their clients in the future.

Technology to help Hurricane Harvey Victims

How technology is helping flood victims recover from Hurricane Harvey.

Hurricane Harvey has dumped the most water on Texas of any Hurricane in modern US History. According to Matthew Cappuci, a current student at both Harvard and MIT, ‘If you took the Empire State Building, more than a hundred stories tall, you could fill that entire volume 33,000 times with the water that fell on Houston and the surrounding areas’. This massive amount of water has and will take an enormous effort to recover from. Technology will play a tremendous role in the rebuilding efforts. Here are four ways technology is helping Hurricane Harvey Victims.

Communication Challenges for First-Responders.

During the first few days of relief efforts, in response to the Hurricane, First Responders were having to get creative in order to communicate with each other and victims needing help. In the hours and days after the hurricane, many 911 call centers and radio centers were out of commission. The disrupted networks also left more than 250,000 people without phone, TV or internet access. As a result of this disruption in telecommunications, the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) set up more than two dozen mobile communication office vehicles throughout the damaged areas. These areas had satellite-connected trucks helping FEMA employees and first responders with voice, video and data networks.

Social media as a way for Hurricane Victims to communicate with police and first responders.

In the early stages of the relief efforts, many victims were finding it difficult to get through to 911. Dajauh Zhane Henix was separated from her daughter during rescue efforts and posted a message to Facebook that was shared more than 32,000 times. With the help of search and rescue and the power of social media, Mrs. Henix was reunited with her daughter. This is just one of many examples of the power of social media to reach many people quickly in a moment of need. Unfortunately, this power can be used in negative ways when videos or pictures go viral with inaccurate information.

Facebook is even matching up to $1 Million in donations made through the site.

Text to Donate to Hurricane Harvey Relief efforts.

This is not such a new technology, but mobile devices now make it easier than ever to donate to relief efforts.

The Red Cross has usedtext messages asa way to donate inmany disaster relief efforts. For Hurricane Harvey they are asking people to Text: “HARVEY” to “90999” to automatically donate $10.

If you would rather donate to a local charity, you can Text: HARVEY2017 to 91999 to support the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund.

Drones are helping the insurance industry process claims.

When disaster strikes, the speed at which insurance companies process claims can be slowed dramatically. This process is important because the more quickly this process gets done, the more quickly the victims can get back to everyday life. Drones are helping insurance carriers process claims at a much faster rate than in the past. This is because an insurance carrier can now use a drone to view the damage of an area several times as big as in the past in a matter of hours. In the past the carrier would have had to have someone physically inspect the property. They may have had to wait several days if not weeks for flood waters to recede enough to get in to the impacted areas. Now this can be done with a drone over an area inspecting ten or more covered properties at one time. This can all be done either from a remote location or even at a location near the disaster area. Drones can allow the carrier to have a visual representation of the impacted area in a matter of a few hours instead of it taking days if not weeks only five or ten years ago.