Overcoming challenges to solve claims operations

By EagleView Assess.

This insurance carrier upgraded their claims processing with drone-based technology to provide more consistent claims reports, improve employee safety and ensure customer satisfaction.

Hastings Mutual Insurance Company, headquartered in Hastings, Michigan, needed to improve their inspection process for property claims. They wanted to ensure they were keeping their adjusters safe by finding a solution that did not require climbing on the roof to assess damages – this would in turn reduce costs by eliminating the need for on-site appointments and improve both the employee and customer experience. They also wanted a solution that would deliver more consistent damage assessment reports to improve workflow processes among their adjusters. Not knowing how to get started, EagleView reached out to the insurance company’s claims director with a unique opportunity that would help their goals take flight.

Why should you use drone-based technology in your day-to-day insurance operations?

EagleView offered Hastings an opportunity to trial EagleView Assess™, its fully autonomous, drone-based, roof inspection solution, to help address some of the business challenges Hastings was trying to solve in its claims’ operations.    

The EagleView team worked with Hastings to implement four drones which included assisting in navigation of the FAA Part 107 Commercial Drone Operator’s licensing, a requirement in the United States for each of Hastings’ four adjusters.

Drone technology can also effectively be used by underwriters and risk management professionals to quickly ascertain the property’s current condition ahead of binding or to develop a more accurate total risk profile of the property.

Eliminating the risk of dangerous falls is a significant benefit of using drones to conduct roof inspections. Year-to-year, it’s an unfortunate reality that falls from roofs pose potentially debilitating or even fatal injuries to claims adjusters and property inspectors. Falls that can easily be avoided by conducting ground-based roof inspections using drone technology.

Consistency of analyses

Hastings relied on EagleView Assess™ and its built-in artificial intelligence that delivered consistent output from roof inspection to roof inspection. Using fully autonomous flight to scan the entire roof from an approximate four-foot elevation, EagleView Assess™ delivers high-definition imagery in a standardized, unambiguous packaged report that identifies anomalies during a full inspection of all roof facets, elevations and roof features. Assess helped Hastings remove subjectivity and provided them with a technologically improved, complete adjuster’s report for claims review and resolution.

Further, Hastings explained that this consistency allowed them to realize cost savings by allowing them to fine tune their indemnity obligations across claims. By removing subjectivity in roof inspections, they were able to optimize their indemnification costs and obligations in the aggregate to achieve more efficiency in their overall claims’ payouts based on EagleView Assess™ anomaly detection technology.  

Improved employee safety

By employing EagleView Assess™, Hastings was able to nearly eliminate the need for their adjusters to climb roofs. This change provided Hastings with multiple benefits including:  

• EagleView Assess™, foremost, made the day-to-day work of their adjusters significantly safer by eliminating the danger of falling off roofs during inspections.  

• Such a change offers Hastings the opportunity to revisit their Workers Comp insurance coverage and seek a significant reduction in costs due to the lower risk of accidents.  

• As individual insurers and the industry face recruitment and retention challenges, EagleView Assess™ offers a democratizing solution as it enables nearly anyone to conduct a thorough and highly accurate roof inspection without ever having to leave the ground.  

Cost reduction

By leveraging EagleView Assess™, Hastings was able to lower some of the direct costs associated with residential property inspections. Hastings no longer needed to call in costly ladder-assist services to inspect roofs that were too steep or too tall for its own assessors to climb.  

Further, by using the complete roof anomaly analysis delivered by EagleView Assess™, Hastings no longer needed to rely on the ladder assist intermediaries to offer their interpretation of the condition of the steepest roofs.

Implementing EagleView Assess™ also eliminated the occasional scheduling friction with insureds that ladder assist coordination sometimes caused. As many claims professionals know, the longer a claim remains open, the higher the associated costs with that claim are. EagleView Assess™ enabled Hastings to eliminate the complexity and time delays associated with additional ladder assist resources to drive claims resolution speed and further realize savings in their claims’ operations.

Enhanced customer and employee experiences  

Hastings shared that their insureds were often excited and eager to view the drone-powered roof inspections conducted through EagleView Assess™. The fully autonomous drone-powered inspection flights are indeed impressive to see in person and, when combined with scheduling efficiency and the improved understanding of total roof condition that EagleView Assess™ offers, deliver a greatly enhanced customer experience that can help insurers drive customer satisfaction and retention.

From an employee perspective, EagleView Assess™ drone technology and the entire roof inspection solution help adjusters to more quickly, efficiently, consistently, and safely deliver the needed roof inspection assessment and comprehensive reports needed to speed effective claims handling. The democratizing technology allowed Hastings's adjusters to differentiate themselves from other insurers using traditional roof inspections and claims handling methods and made the adjusters’ day-to-day roles easier and fundamentally more productive.

The results

In summary, Hastings Mutual Insurance realized many benefits from employing EagleView Assess™ for its adjusters in its property claims roof inspection process. With improved adjuster report consistency, greater safety for its adjusters, reduced claims-related costs, and an overall improved customer and employee experience during the claims process, Hastings Mutual Insurance saw EagleView Assess™ as a transformative innovative technology solution in their organization’s overall goal of modernizing and innovating their claims operations today and into the future.

Original article and photo source: EagleView Assess