Germany-headquartered global reinsurer Munich Re has announced the launch of the Hurricane Response Suite, a set of tools designed to revolutionise and improve an insurer’s ability to respond to hurricane events.
The new suite of tools is designed to help firms assess widespread property damage in the aftermath of a hurricane event, while at the same time improve the claims experience for their customers.
The Hurricane Response Suite was developed by Munich Re’s Remote Industries team, which provides companies with needed information to prioritise and steer claims adjuster resources, proactively reach out to policyholders and ultimately help to mitigate losses.
Munich Re explains that the new suite of tools includes highly detailed damage predictions starting four days before an expected hurricane, aerial views that are available immediately after the hurricane – even before claim adjusters can enter the affected area, and damage assessment from a machine learning algorithm.
Roman Buegler, head of THE LAB, Munich Re, said: “The hurricane events from 2016 to 2018 resulted in a high volume of claims, a shortage of adjusters and higher loss adjustment expenses for insurance companies, with claims resolution delayed for many of those who were impacted.
“Our new suite of tools utilizes cutting-edge technology to help insurance companies improve the customer experience and free up adjusters to manage serious or complex losses, while allowing rapid settlement of more simple losses.”
According to Munich Re, Remote Industries leverages high-resolution aerial imagery and machine learning to help with risk and loss assessment up to four days prior to an expected hurricane event, with daily recalibration and updates made available until one day after the event. Two – three days after an event, explains Munich Re, Remote Industries utilises the Geospatial Intelligence Center (GIC) in order to collect aerial imagery of hurricane damage.
The team’s machine learning algorithms are then applied to those aerial images from the GIC in order to detect damaged individual property features, including things like roof damage and exterior buildings. This, says Munich Re, alongside Remote Industries web-tool, enables insurers with the ability to deploy their resources to the more complex claims and to start settling the more straight forward claims, where appropriate.
“More extreme and frequent catastrophe events have unfortunately become the norm, so our industry can’t rely on the way we’ve always responded to hurricanes. Having remote sensing capabilities is a way to step up our game for our insureds at a time when they need us most,” said Buegler.
Remote Industries is available across the U.S., including the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, and also the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.
