State Farm rolls out crash detection tech  September 6th 2023

How Smart Homes Are Changing Insurance

Insurers and homeowners are using IoT devices to optimize housing efficiency, streamline daily tasks and reduce urban household risks.

KEY TAKEAWAY:

--Smart homes offer a vast array of benefits in: risk mitigation and prevention, data collection and analysis, personalized premiums, faster claims processing, home monitoring services, liability coverage, premium discounts, the environment and health and wellness.

Smart homes, equipped with various Internet of Things (IoT) devices and technologies, have the potential to change the insurance industry.

Insurers have a natural synergy with smart home technologies. With almost 69% of U.S. households owning at least one smart home device, it is clear that such technologies help consumers manage, protect and efficiently run their homes via mobile applications.

While smart home technology is not a new concept, many insurance companies and homeowners are adopting it like never before to optimize housing efficiency, streamline daily tasks, improve quality of life and well-being and reduce urban household risks.

Mike de Waal is president and founder of Global IQX

The Key to Transformation? It’s Not Technology

Insurers can overcome the many challenges of digital transformation by dropping their technology-first mindset and adopting a people-centric one.

KEY TAKEAWAY:

--For transformation to occur, key stakeholders must have the five C's in place: customer, capacity, competency, culture and communication.

Sixty-one percent of people say resources (a category that includes both cost and people) are the biggest challenge to digital transformation, according to a poll during an Accelerate webinar hosted by Equisoft. But life insurance companies can overcome this challenge by dropping their technology-first mindset and adopting a people-centric attitude.

For change to be successful at life insurance companies, key stakeholders must have the five C's in place: customer, capacity, competency, culture and communication. For life insurance companies looking to extract the anticipated value from their digital transformation, here are a few suggestions on how to improve each of the five.

Brian Carey is senior director, insurance industry principal, Equisoft

IBHS’s Roy Wright on Natural Peril Property Resiliency, Part 1 : Risk & Insurance

Since 1977, the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety has used a scientific approach to expand our understanding of how property damage occurs — and how it can be prevented.

In testing individual materials and building products, IBHS is unique in its dedication to replicating the effects of natural perils as precisely as possible, even going so far as to develop its own methods for creating more natural irregularly shaped faux hailstones.

It’s unique in that it also tests structures holistically at 1:1 scale, too.

At its 90-acre research facility in South Carolina, IBHS constructs entire buildings, then subjects them to simulated windstorms, hailstorms, ember storms and other perils to test their resilience in situations that mimic real-world conditions.

Risk & Insurance® recently spoke with Roy Wright, IBHS’s president and CEO, to learn more about how the organization studies building resilience and translates its insights into practical guidance for designers, builders, consumers and their insurers. What follows is part one of that interview, edited for clarity.

How insurtech is shaping the future of workers' compensation

Workers' compensation insurance has been around for more than a century in the United States as a way to safeguard both employees and their employers in the event of an accident or injury. For most of this period, it remained largely unchanged. In recent years, though, technology and innovation are transforming the way it protects workers and the companies that employ them.

With new technology solutions emerging seemingly every day, there's a lot to be excited about.

Improve customer experience with automated claims processing

New solutions couldn't have come at a better time as the workers' compensation market faces challenges related to stubborn inflation, increased wages and rising medical costs.

At the same time, competition has increased. New players have emerged, and many carriers in this space are going after the same market share. Increased competition has brought down rates, too, as insurers compete for the same business.

Workers' comp, reimagined by technology

Innovation is happening at a rapid clip, thanks to emerging insurance technologies, or insurtechs, that are enhancing the way insurers select risk, underwrite policies, manage the claims process, support insureds and more.

Insurtech is transforming the workers' compensation segment through big data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, wearable technology and more. It's adding value for both insurers and insureds by increasing efficiency, improving pricing accuracy and enhancing safety. Technology now offers us a way to analyze risk characteristics and make informed decisions about risks more quickly and effectively.

Ultimately, with more competitors in the workers' comp space than ever before, insurers are leaning into insurtech to gain an advantage over the competition.

Jacob Geyer, Chief Insurance Officer, CompScience Dale Hoppe, Vice President, Workers' Compensation E&S/S Programs, Nationwide