Insurer and reinsurer Brit has said that it used aerial imagery to help expedite payments arising from Hurricane Ian.
The firm said it had used a proprietary machine learning algorithm in tandem with ultra-high-resolution ariel imagery to accelerate the accurate identification of US property damage and was then able to ‘virtually adjust’ and approve claims payments. It said it was able to make its first payment in response to the disaster on 8 October.
Sheel Sawhney, group head of claims and operations at Brit, said: “This shows that virtual claims adjusting in real-time is a reality for the London market. By bringing together the industry’s premier geo-spatial imagery, our own machine learning capabilities and market-leading payment technology we have been able to make payments to our customers only a week after Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida.”
Brit has been working successfully with the Geospatial Insurance Consortium (GIC) since April 2019. GIC is a non-profit organisation that captures best in class post-event aerial imagery for first responders and insurance companies. Utilising the GIC images and Brit’s machine learning algorithm, Brit’s Claims team has a virtual claim adjusting platform that can expedite claims payments in locations that cannot be immediately serviced by local field adjusters in the initial days following catastrophe events.
Mike Barry, head of global property claims for Brit, commented, “At Brit, we continue to advance the way we manage claims and are committed to paying our end clients faster. This includes investment and innovation in virtual claims adjusting as well as a complete transformation of our loss funding and payments technology. Catastrophes are a high urgency, high visibility event for the market and our focus is always on helping the dislocated families and businesses that are impacted.”
Brit is also actively pursuing Hurricane Ian claims payments that would utilise the Future of Lloyd’s faster claims payments service (FCP). FCP is a transformative solution to allow delegated claims administrators to make payments on request, drawing down on Lloyd’s managing agents funds directly.
