I’m very much new to the InsureTech industry - well at least the ‘insure’ bit. Via my work with AMCO I’ve observed that the worlds of security and insurance have always been close - but the two have never had the inter-connected impact that perhaps they should have, and nothing hugely innovative has ever spun out of the security/insurance intersection.
That’s arguably about to change, with the increasing ubiquity of smart home devices / sensors that can collect data about a person’s home activities - good and bad.
Last night InstechLondon hosted their ‘Connected Insurance' event in which 8 of the most interesting InsureTech-related iOT companies were showcased. Here’s a quick run down of what I learnt, and how they’re trying to shake up the insurance industry . . .
Domotz
Domotz is a remote monitoring service for your network devices, giving your more knowledge of what’s going on with your smart home devices. The idea came from an individual problem that one of the founders identified: i.e. the fact that he’d amassed 10’s of different connected devices in his home, but a lot of them didn’t work / weren’t connect properly to each other / the network.
The platform is completely device agnostic, and is designed as a ‘plug-in’. From a business perspective, the Domotz team said they were developing out x3 proposition:
- Connected home monitoring product
- Cyber attack monitoring tool
- Application gadget insurance.
They stated that they were already embedded in various hardware companies, had a partnership with BestBuy and were building out an analytics platform with SwissRe. All-in-all they seemed to have got some good traction, and identified a growing problem within the iOT infrastructure - given that there’s estimated to be c.26 billion iOT devices by 2020.
Leakbot
In short, Leakbot is a water leak monitoring service. Spun-off from Home Service company HomeServe, Leakbot identified that most leak detectors require you to second guess where your water leak is going to happen. Leakbot is designed to monitor your hole mains water system for leaks - meaning that you only need one Leakbot device per home.
The Leakbot system works by monitoring the flow of water through your mains water pipes, detecting any anomalies from usual day-to-day patterns - and warns you when it spots any anomalies. All of this is done via a software layer of machine-learning.
With Escape of water claims making up 25% of all UK home insurance claims (totalling c.£700 million) this has an obvious application in lowering insurance claims - through early prevention.
For the insurance industry, the good news is that Leakbot is cheap enough per-unit that it’s possible for Insurance companies to give the product away for free - which Aviva has recently started doing.
Neos
The starting point for Neos is that ‘customers don’t like insurance’ and so Neos’ proposition is that they can add value to a person’s experience of insurance. To do this they’ve based their product around ‘Smart Home Technology’, providing a suite of smart home sensors covering burglar, smoke and water detection. All of these devices are designed to collect data, fed through a user’s app. They’ve created a ‘service layer’ on top of all of this, meaning that whenever there’s an issue detected, they can provide a service to solve the issue - i.e. sending police, plumbers etc.
They claim that their core IP is around creating an iOT platform - starting with the home, but in time moving into the car and health.
Their founder, Matt Poll, stated that the core challenges to the business are:
- How to get an insurance carrier to cover (which they’ve recently done via a partnership with Hiscox)
- How to get distribution. Matt said that distribution is key, but that he was proud to announce a 'distribution partnership’ with a company who will make the quotation process easier / more friction free.
Audatex
Audatex is a B2B service provider to the insurance industry that steamlines the assessment and estimating process for insurance claims. Their biggest space is the motor assessment space, seeing 95% of motor assessment - providing processes to help check mechanics are quoting accurate time and parts for repair work.
Expanding beyond this role, Audatex are starting to help use data to flow through to risk assessment - with a mission to make the most of our are and (now) connected home data. As a business they’re connected to carriers and car manufacturing - placing them in a very strong position to help both industries innovate.
They stated a statistic that 80% of people are happy to share data along as there’s a value to it. Their position is how to help customers make the most of that data - and how to create a policy of the future which takes into account data.
There’s an interesting wider question of how an actuary would price this data into a policy - which is still something the underwriting industry is grappling with.
Esri UK
Esri are a specialist GiS company, providing insurance companies and government clients with GiS mapping data. For insurers, historically they’ve used GiS to track things like properties to the proximity to flood zones, however they’re now looking at how GiS data can be used to track ‘movable asset’s (e.g. like huge container ships).
They’re now working with a partner that track AiS feeds (which is shipping data). This data is mostly used to help ships from bumping into each other, but what they’re now doing is providing this data to insurers so they know where their assets are, enabling them to get alerts when their assets approach high risk areas (e.g. piracy / high-risk weather areas).
Similar to Audatex, there’s a question of whether there’ll be any traction from insurers: e.g. providing data to enable them to insure on a minute-by-minute basis.
360GlobalNet
360GlobalNet is a platform that allows all parties to claim efficiently - by providing processes to the claimant to gather appropriate data to share with the insurer (e.g. photos / videos of the claim). Through using 360GlobalNet, insurers have seen indemnity claims down 15/20% and costs down 20%.
Interestingly the representative from 360GlobalNet stated that they don’t use an app, which may be representative of the one of nature of an insurance claim - meaning that the user-experience of downloading an app was not relevant.
The example he talked through was the event of an incident e.g. escape of water. The first point of contact is via email and phone. The claimant is then sent an SMS, which links to a webpage where the claimant can fill in all the relevant information and upload relevant images and videos. The claims handler can see all this information in real-time and is able to make decisions - via a simple workflow. The system can also live streaming too - which is important especially with complex claims / large loss. Using video they see a massive lowering in claims charges from contractors, as the information provided is 100% real.
Overall they claim to see an average claim response time of 87 minutes from upload of information and settlement of claim - which seems impressive.
Felcana
Felcana provide dog and cat monitoring - hence the name (for all your latin students!). Their bold claim is that by 2025 they expect to see all pets connected to the internet, and what Felcana allows pet owners to do is to track the health of their pets.
Founded by Dr James, who’s a vet and ex-Bain consultant, Felcana’s product is a mix devices (a pet tracking device and home sensors) and an app. The pet tracking device (the Helix) fits on the pet’s collar, and is elegantly designed. The home detectors (beacons) are designed to enable owners track the activity of their pets around the house e.g. how often they go through the cat flap.
The connection to insurance is linked to Felcana’s aim to spot ailments early - like hip displacement which affects a high percentage of all dogs - therefore lowering vet bills and claims.
Felcana is currently raising funds via a KickStarter campaign.
30mhz
The 30Mhz pitch is simple: smart sensors for industry grade insights, giving industrial organisations (farms, ports, factories) real-time metrics for their assets.
Anthony, one of the founders, explained that they were called 30Mhz as 30Mhz is the radio frequency with the highest frequency radio wave - and the one with the longest range.
The 30Mhz is a platform that goes from sensor, to cloud to dashboard. 30Mhz was initially set up as an API, but now provides dashboards - as most clients wanted dashboards to deliver the data they collect. The 30Mhz is technology agnostic, working with any type of sensor - creating a sensor network.
Two examples / case studies Anthony gave included:
- Port of Amsterdam: the Port of Amsterdam has a lot of fixed assets. Using 30Mhz they’ve attached pressure sensors to ‘docking plates’ (amongst other things), so that they can measure the wear and tear of the machinery, spotting issues early and enabling the Port to repair machinery before it breaks - and causes any issues - therefore optimising port utilisation.
- Pepper farmer (agriculture): apparently peppers burn easily - easily getting something 'sun scold'. To prevent sun scold the farmer (and any solution) needs to know the temperature on the skin of the pepper. 30Mhz created aIR temperature gauge that points at the skin of the peppers, and measures temperature on skin - alerting the farmer to peppers whose skins are getting too hot. According to the farmer with the help of 30Mhz they’ve increased yield by 6%, and generated 1000% ROI from the technology. Impressive stuff.
Concirrus
Concirrus provide a platform that enables insurers to turn iOT data into risk data, usable by underwriters to factor into their risk profiling.
In a world in which there’s an increasing amount of iOT data being created from devices, Concirrus provides a way for the insurance industry to make the most of this data. The company was started by 2 guys a few years back who spotted that there was a lot of data being made available from the iOT, and so wanted to connect the dots to how this data might be made useful - in the context of the insurance industry.
Ultimately Concirrus helps insurers get a better understanding of their customer - via data. What the product looks like in practice is a series of APIs (connecting the data) and dashboards, helping visualise the data. The platform is agnostic, connecting to all types of sensors.
As a vision of where the product may go next, they understand that revenue from home insurance premiums is limited, and see the data provided by Concirrus as a way to cross-sell new services.
Flock
Flocks pitch was quick and simple: Flock provides big data driven risk analysis for drones. As drones increase in prevalence there’s a need to insure the risk against these. Flock provides the ability to indentify, quantify and minimise this risk.