WGAN-TV Matterport Meets Insurance Underwriting and Risk Management- #1162- How Matterport Solves Risk Management for Insurance Underwriting

How Technology Can Help Risk Assessing

Hi All,

Matterport 3D Tours enables virtual walk throughs by risk engineers to make better/informed risk assessments for insurance underwriting. The price point for the Matterport digital twin - much less than sending a risk engineer on-site - saves money and means more properties that can have a risk engineer make an assessment of the property.

"Largely, the biggest pain point that this creates, this whole ecosystem is when we're operating with carriers, only seeing 10 to 15% of the properties are actually sending risk engineers out, we're largely creating a scenario where rates for policies are now becoming competitive from one company to another, and in order for insurance carriers, after that business, they're changing their rates, but to that market conditions, rather than actual business risk conditions, and this is dangerous," says Matterport Director of Accounts Brandon Donatelli.

"This could lead an insured to barely underinsured, because we don't have actual data about the business and how the business needs to be covered appropriately, how that policy needs to be written."

"So, the capability of Matterport to provide much better insight with that digital clone that we create, is now giving both the end user or the insured, more peace of mind that the carrier is writing a policy that actually covers everything that that insured needs coverage for in the event of a catastrophic loss, and then the carrier has a huge benefit, because they're actually capturing the data information they need to write a policy that's going to provide significant coverage and adequately cover the insured, and not allow market conditions from maybe a competitive bid to drive a price down arbitrarily, versus an actual coverage need, for that insured."

"So now we create that environment that we can create a truly merit-based, competitive marketplace for carriers."

What is your experience with Matterport meets insurance risk management and insurance underwriting?

Happy New Year,

Dan

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Transcript (for video above)

- Well so let's move into the Matterport role here. If maybe you could map for me, here's the problem or pain point, and this is what Matterport solves, and the benefit of doing that is the following.

- So certainly, so risk identification, and I'll go one step further and talk about a little bit of drone technology as well.

We all know Matterport, we're well along the phase of awareness. I think largely, a large amount of people know what Matterport is today, and what it does.

But how it's behaving and how it's changing the industry and really changing a 100 year industry, because it's able to bring data visually and analytic data, data we can pull out of that visual information, to start making better decisions and changing our reliance and actuarial formulas that no longer fit today's building standards or risk standards, so to speak.

So drones, for example, can help us identify issues of like the condition of the roof of a building and if it's in good maintenance and in good care, it could also help us see different perspectives of a property, literally from 10,000 square feet and closer from a bird's eye view to help us identify anything from the risk of other buildings that are in poor maintenance, that could potentially have a collapse or an issue that could have a negative impact on that business's ability to stay active and continue to operate, and then as we dive in, come down to the ground or street level, our ability to walk through the front door.

Matterport has that great capability on our exteriors to capture 360 imagery at a very high, 130 plus megapixel value, and then carry on into the interior of the property, capturing optical imagery that's three dimensional, a literal digital clone of the property, allows someone from another state or across the country, to actually go in and perform those risk engineering inspections that normally would have been very costly to put a high value resource like an engineer, maybe fly them in, have travel costs associated with that.

We can eliminate a lot of that, by having a capture partner enter a property and go in and capture the visual spatial data that's needed so that the resources within the underwriting and risk engineering ecosystem can work with that data to make better informed decisions and write better policies.

Largely, the biggest pain point that this creates, this whole ecosystem is when we're operating with carriers, only seeing 10 to 15% of the properties are actually sending risk engineers out, we're largely creating a scenario where rates for policies are now becoming competitive from one company to another, and in order for insurance carriers, after that business, they're changing their rates, but to that market conditions, rather than actual business risk conditions, and this is dangerous.

This could lead an insured to barely underinsured, because we don't have actual data about the business and how the business needs to be covered appropriately, how that policy needs to be written.

So, the capability of Matterport to provide much better insight with that digital clone that we create, is now giving both the end user or the insured, more peace of mind that the carrier is writing a policy that actually covers everything that that insured needs coverage for in the event of a catastrophic loss, and then the carrier has a huge benefit, because they're actually capturing the data information they need to write a policy that's going to provide significant coverage and adequately cover the insured, and not allow market conditions from maybe a competitive bid to drive a price down arbitrarily, versus an actual coverage need, for that insured.

So now we create that environment that we can create a truly merit-based, competitive marketplace for carriers.

- So, gosh, so many questions come out of that. The first, let's talk about those businesses that are not getting a visit by a risk engineer.

- Yeah, kinda scary right? Dan I mean--

- So, the insurance company, the underwriter has made a decision not to send somebody to a site, so they're going to have an expense, associated with now bringing in a photographer to shoot a Matterport 3D Tour, outdoor views inside. Does the additional expense solve enough problems to warrant that additional expense by the insurance carrier?

- So we have a couple of scenarios we have to look at to make dollars and cents of this question.

So, first and foremost, as a carrier, if I'm talking about an insurance policy that's only worth a couple thousand dollars a year, that's largely going to probably make, help set what my budget, my ideal budget, might be to go out and capture information on that property, and if I look at the life span of a typical commercial line with a business, I believe it's in the three to five year range that the typical policy holder maintains that a policy with a carrier.

So if we look at the lifetime value of policy premium, without a claim being involved, what that looks like for the carrier, that largely dictates what the value of sending a risk engineer out to that site would be, or an alternative method.