The Tech-Enabled Insurance Claim Revolution
October 20, 2021 | Webinar
From geospatial technologies and aerial imagery to machine learning and artificial intelligence, what happens when digital innovations are embedded in the insurance claim process? This installment of Wednesdays with Woodward® included an eye-opening conversation on how claims are being revolutionized with digital tools that increase efficiency and satisfaction for today’s connected customer. Travelers Senior Vice President Patrick Gee took us inside the latest transformative innovations and explored what they mean for business and personal insurance customers.
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Presentation. Text, Wednesday with Woodward Webinar Series. The Tech-enabled insurance claim revolution. Logos, Metro Hartford Alliance, University of South Carolina Darla Moore School of Business, Travelers Institute, U Conn School of Business, M.S. in Financial Technology, American Property Casualty Insurance Association, Insuring America, a.p.c.i. dot org. Video feed in upper right corner. Label, Joan Woodward.
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Hello. Good afternoon. And thank you for joining us. I'm Joan Woodward and I'm honored to lead the Travelers Institute, which is the public policy and educational arm of Travelers.
Welcome to Wednesdays with Woodward, a series we convened just as the pandemic was hitting us all, to discuss critical issues impacting our personal and professional lives. We tackle business, leadership, and insurance, of course, and much more.
Today is all about insurance innovation, in particular, applying technology to the insurance claim process. And there's a lot going on in this space, so we're thrilled you joined us today. What does this look like? And what's working in claim technology? How is this improving our customers' experience, which is really what it's all about?
It's going to be an eye-opening hour. And before I get started, first I'd like to share our legal disclaimer with you.
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Slide, About Travelers Institute Webinars. The Wednesdays with Woodward educational webinar series is presented by The Travelers Institute, the public policy division of Travelers. This program is offered for informational and educational purposes only. You should consult with your financial, legal, insurance or other advisors about any practices suggested by this program. Please note that this session is being recorded and may be used as travelers deems appropriate. Information contained herein is not intended as, nor does it constitute, legal or professional advice, nor is it an endorsement of any source cited or information provided. Any examples or discussions of claim handling or processes are for illustrative purposes only. Every claim is unique and must be evaluated on its own merits. Claim professionals should exercise their professional judgement in the management of claims in accordance with all travelers guidelines and or procedures. This presentation does not amend or otherwise affect the provisions or coverages of any insurance policy or bond issued by Travelers nor is it a representation that coverage does or does not exist for any particular claim or loss under any such policy or bond. Coverage depends on the facts and circumstances involved in the claim or loss, all applicable policy or bond provisions, and any applicable law. In no event will Travelers or any of its subsidiaries and affiliates be liable in contract or in tort to anyone who has access to this presentation for the accuracy or completeness of the information relied upon in the preparation of this presentation or for the completeness of any recommendations from cited sources. Participants should consult source material for more detail.
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As always, we want you to be part of this conversation. So please stay in touch.
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Slide, Submit live questions, use and the Q and A feature. Linked In, Connect, Joan Jois Woodward, Watch replays, travelers institute dot org. Take our survey, link in chat. join our email list, link in chat or institute @ travelers.com. Hashtag Wednesdays with Woodward.
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You can join our mailing list. You can connect with me directly on LinkedIn, or watch replays at the travelersinstitute.org.
Today's replay will be posted there and also we're going to email you a link to the webinar replay. You'll find all of this and more in the Zoom chat right now. So take a look at the Zoom chats.
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Slide, The Tech enabled insurance claim revolution. Logos.
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Also I'm thrilled to recognize four partner organizations today that are really invested in advancing important business dialogues.
And our fabulous partners and co-hosts are the Risk and Uncertainty Management Center at the South Carolina School of Business-- University of South Carolina, the American Property Casualty Insurance Association-- very good partners our ours, the University of Connecticut's School of Masters in Business-- a Master's in Financial Technology program, and the Metro Hartford Alliance.
A huge thanks to this powerhouse group for their collaboration and a special welcome to all their members. OK, so let's get started. Today I'm honored to have Pat Gee, my good friend, as my special guest.
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Slide, Speakers. Joan Woodward, Executive Vice President, Public Policy, President, Travelers Institute, Travelers. Patrick Gee, Senior Vice President, Personal Insurance Claim, Auto and Property Claim, Travelers.
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Pat serves as Senior Vice President for Personal Insurance Claim, and Auto and Property Claim here at Travelers.
He's deeply really embedded in the claim process and our CAT response from start to finish, helping Travelers bring the next generation of capabilities to serve our customers. He has responsibility across both personal and commercial insurance in the claim department.
He's really been at the leading edge of our digital and mobile strategies, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, and geospatial imagery, all of which is to say, he's a critical part of the customer experience and the agent and broker experience, a key driver of our topic today.
He brings extensive leadership experience from the insurance industry. And I'm really thrilled to welcome him to our virtual stage. Pat's going to kick us off with an opening presentation. And then I'll join him for some Q&A. But please take your questions to the Q&A function, which is in the bottom there of your middle screen.
You all know this. You're Zoom experts by now. And put your questions in the Q&A feature. I'll try to get to as many as we can at the end of our discussion. So Pat, take it away.
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Label, Patrick Gee. Slide, The Tech enabled insurance claim revolution. Patrick Gee, SVP, Auto Property Claim and Personal Insurance.
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Great. Thanks very much, Joan. And it's great to be with everyone. And thank you for being with us here today. What we thought we'd do today is walk everyone through some of the things we've been working on and certainly, there's many around the industry that are working on these types of technologies and advancements in various shapes and forms.
We're going to spend more time in the auto and property arena today. We have other lines of business, obviously, but those are topics for another day. And we're going to really focus on what we've been doing the last few years relative to predictive analytics, photo analytics, AI, and machine learning, and how that's all coming together, hopefully to create a better experience for our customers and also really facilitate the claim process.
When we think about claim at our company, you know there's really three primary objectives we have. One is we want to create a great customer experience. We want to have terrific claim outcomes. And we want to do it at the lowest possible cost. And it's the combination of those three are really kind of that bullseye that helps drive the focus and hopefully what you'll see here today.
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Slide, Claim Process Innovation. Level of Customer Engagement and Expertise required. From left to right, minimal, food spoilage. Low, auto physical damage. Medium, property damage. High, injury claim. Images.
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Before we jump in, just to set a little bit of context-- so as we think about the innovation, if you look on the left side of the screen here, you see we kind of have from minimal to more complicated claims. We're going to spend a little more time on the left side today. Some of these technologies that we're talking about really lend themselves to kind of the flow through the process of claims that are a little bit less complicated.
There's an entire conversation that's really interesting about how you apply some of these tools to more complex claims-- liability claims, injury claims, those types of things. But we don't have enough time to get into all that today. So we'll focus a little bit more on the left side of the equation here as we're walking through the conversation.
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Slide, Two items joined by a bar. On the left is Build it, on the right, buy slash partner.
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Another comment I wanted to make before we jump in is we're all faced with hey, how do we approach this process. We're trying to build it ourselves, maybe building out some of our legacy systems or platforms. There's an awful lot of really interesting technology out there in the insurer tech industry.
And
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The bar that connects the two now has the text, hybrid.
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our experience has been it depends on the topic, the subject matter, and the capability. And we've really found that everything from being on the left side of this page to the right side of this page might make sense or anywhere kind of in the middle as you look left and right between the build it and the buy and partner boxes.
So a lot of the solutions that we're going to walk through with you today do have exterior partners that we've been working with and helping deliver this technology. Sometimes we may purchase their technology outright and then make changes ourselves to customize it for our use. Sometimes it's a little more off the shelf. It can really be anywhere in that mix.
So you'll get a little bit of sense that as we walk through the rest of the discussion.
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Slide, Property Damage. Images, A hurricane, a leaking water pipe, a storm, a burning building, sparks fly from an electrical gauge, hail, a tornado, a living room with all the items thrown on the ground and the door open, icicles and snow from the eaves, a forest fire.
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What we thought we'd do too is we'll just kind of take this talk a little bit about property insurance first and then we'll go into auto claims. And at the very end, Joan asked us to spend a few minutes talking about our perspective on auto telematics, which is a very interesting topic. And so we'll do that as well.
But to get started, if you're thinking about property claims, there's some examples here on the slide in front of us. But it's all of this and more-- exterior damage, interior damage, really anything you might think of when you think about property damage. And what we thought we'd do if it made sense is really just try to do this in the context of walking through the process of a property claim.
Some
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Slide, Property Claim Process Innovation. From left to right, event happens, report damage, assess slash pay, repair.
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of you maybe unfortunately have had property claims or know people that have had them. It's sometimes easier to talk about these tools in sort of a live context or live flow of the claim. So that's what we'll do, from the point that an event happens all the way through having the repairs be completed because that's really the focus of trying to help our customers get back to their pre-loss conditions.
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Slide, Geospatial event assessment. A darkened image of a city with a circular shape over a part of it titled damage area.
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So let's step back for a second and assume we've had an event. And for the sake of this discussion, we can say it's a weather-related event. What we spend a lot of time on in the recent years is really leveraging geospatial tools and photo analytics to facilitate this process that used to be a lot more manual or require a lot more in-person assessments.
So you see along the top there, those are just different examples of different actual events that we've modeled.
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Three maps with different patterns of color.
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If you look in the upper left here, just as an example, this would be a hailstorm. And you see the different colors-- green, yellow, red. And those are all indications of maybe different size hail or different impact from the hail based on the supercell.
And we can overlay all of our policies in for us. And the neat thing here is we can immediately post-event now, or as an event is moving through let's say a part of our customer base, understand a lot more about the impact to our customers, which can help us determine what exactly our response needs are right out of the gates, instead of waiting for people to be on location to start reporting on degrees of damage and all those types of things.
It
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Beside the hail map is one for fire with a large swath of red highlight. The wind map shows clusters of red dots.
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works particularly well for events like hail but it works for fire, certainly. You have wind, flood. And this ability to combine this geospatial information with our customer base information and then take that to an extra degree of analytics is extremely informative in kicking off our response and really being able to respond very quickly with the right resources for our customers.
And
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Slide, Geospatial. A flow chart from left to right.
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so just to give you a little bit more of an example of this, let's say we had the event on the left. We basically have aerial imagery working with our partners in this case near a map of roughly 90, 95% of the properties in the United States. We have an image that gets updated very, very regularly.
And
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Text, Event, wildfire, tornado, hurricane, flood. Aerial Imagery. Images.
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so when an event occurs, let's say you have a tropical system. And in this case, it's a wind event that's modeled. We do overflights immediately after those events. And then what we do is you move to the third area over here, is we apply artificial intelligence solutions to help determine almost immediately which of our customers properties are damaged and to what degree.
Obviously
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Certain buildings are highlighted in red yellow and green squares. Text, Claims Solutions.
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this works best for exterior claims and claims where there was let's say some degree of wind damage, et cetera. And so that really can kickstart the entire process of responding to customers, allow us to basically begin to triage to determine what degree of expertise based on the amount of damage, and even facilitate the remote estimating process. And I'll talk more about that in a minute.
And this can manifest itself in a number of ways.
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Text, Geospatial Damage Assessment. Two aerial images side by side. Labels, Pre, Post. Viewed on smart phone.
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So now we have apps. And you can basically pull the slider if you will, in the center there left or right to look at the pre or post-view if you wanted just to look at an individual property. And we make this available to our agents, all of our employees, et cetera.
We
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Slide, Geospatial Visual A. I. Map, Nashville TN. It is covered in clusters of red yellow orange and green dots.
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can take a specific event like even a tornado. This is one that happened down in Nashville in the last couple of years. And you can see all the dots there reflect customers and degrees of damage. The degrees of damage are determined by the AI models that we trained. And so you can see just some examples of that on the left.
So this would be a very specific event damage assessment.
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Slide, Catastrophe Map for Agents. A map with red dots is displayed on a desktop computer as well as a smartphone.
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We can take all that information. And we do make that available for all of our agency partners. You can get that at our ForAGENTS website. So you can go in and look at your book of business if you're an agent of ours. And you can look at individual properties.
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Slide, Catastrophe Map 2.0 for Agents. Aerial image of a damaged house. A list of properties and degree of damage in a table on a monitor.
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And where we're headed with this capability down the road is to actually almost present to our agents, here's which of your properties were damaged to which degree based on the assessment of all of our predictive tools and AI. This will be coming a little bit more next year.
But again, there needs to have been an event of some significance. We don't do overflights for every small event or individual supercell around the country. But if it's something that we've all heard of, that's probably been designated a catastrophe by someone like PCS, we're typically doing all the overflights and all this information is available. And it really helps jumpstart the process of responding to events with all the right resources at the right place and kind of at the right time.
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Slide, Geospatial, Remote Inspection. Image of a large house from above. Exterior measurement, detail schematic. A 3D animation rebuild of the house.
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The other thing, though we can do, if we move along beyond just, OK, the event occurred and we've determined our initial response, is these tools also really allow us to do things like this remote inspection. And this has been implemented a lot in let's say wildfire situations, some we've had up in Canada, many in the US, out in the Western states.
But in some circumstances, you know the authorities don't allow entry until maybe even days or weeks after an event. And in many cases, we've already done overflights. We know which of our customers properties have been damaged or unfortunately, in some cases, they may have been completely burned. And we've even had situations where we were aware of that even before our customer was. And so we could start working with them immediately.
And the neat thing about this technology is, as you can see some of the schematics there in the center, but basically, we can determine all the dimensions let's say of a roof. We can build the structure out underneath it. And so we've been able to go a long way down the path of essentially responding for our customers that may have had a total loss from a fire without anyone getting access directly to that property.
Again, because there could be challenges doing that. The fire may still be underway, et cetera. So it really facilitates starting the payment process and so that our customers can start the process of thinking about how they want to rebuild and determining their plans. So a really neat capability again that this geospatial tool set provides us.
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Slide, Live Virtual Inspection. Image in a smartphone display, a stain on a ceiling. Text, Residential property interior. 100% increase in utilization.
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But let's say it's some damage that we can see. It might even be interior damage. So let's move a little further down the inspection path here. And so this is just a simple water loss. And we now have some tools that work very well. And we can do-- essentially, think of it as a live video interaction. But we can take photos and video and do other things on our end.
So our customer just really has to walk around and show the damage. And we can document it in all the ways that we need to. This works really well for interior losses. We used this technology a lot during our recent Hurricane Ida with a lot of the interior water damage that we had unfortunately in the Northeast and in other places.
And what we've seen over the last few years, particularly during COVID, is that we could all expect would be a lot of customer demand for products and capabilities like this. They were much more comfortable doing this documentation without let's say someone entering their home. And so it was a key capability to offer.
And we saw a greater than doubling of utilization of these tools let's say during the COVID period for all the reasons that we could imagine.
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Slide, Virtual Measurement. A smartphone image of a house. A model maps and measures the image of the house. Text, 70% utilization, high customer utilization.
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The other thing we have too are other forms of virtual inspection tools. And this is one that we have in conjunction with our partner, Hover. And it's a tool that allows basically a customer with very little effort to document all the measurements of the exterior of their home and more.
And I think in this case, we're going to flip over to a very short video that does we think a pretty decent job of talking through this technology and why it's so impactful. So Jessica, I will stop sharing. And you can go ahead. Thank you.
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A smartphone snaps pictures of various houses.
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- Claim has a new capability that can turn a few smartphone photos of a home into roof measurements or even a scaled 3D model. We can now get detailed exterior measurements for siding, roofing, windows, and doors.
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Measurements appear in the various parts of a 3D model of a house.
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Claim professionals don't have to spend time wrestling with a tape measure. And because photos are taken at ground level, they don't need to haul ladders and climb on roofs.
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Image, two employees with a ladder.\
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This can help our claim professionals stay safer while allowing them more time to work through their inventory. And customers can use it too, allowing them to capture images at their convenience without having to schedule an inspection time with an adjuster.
So how does it work?
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Smart phone snaps pictures of a house.
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After launching the app, follow the prompts and snap eight photos around the house. State of the art algorithms plot the measurements and send them notification when the measurements are ready. Surface areas show square footage of each material. And openings show the width and height of every window and door.
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Measurements appear in the various parts of a 3D model of a house.
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If searching for a specific dimension, click and drag for any horizontal, vertical, or diagonal measurement. Now that our claim professionals have all the necessary measurements, they can calculate estimates quickly and easily. So claim professionals save time and stay safer while providing customers with more flexibility and convenience as part of an overall great claim experience.
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Hopefully you got a sense of that example as we were walking through the process there. And I will reshare here. You can see that OK, right? And if you imagine this tool, it's again, just eight photos around the house. It determines really all the measurements. It can determine the damaged areas as well.
So if you see here on the left, the home. And then these are the measurements that came right out of the tool. It even was able to capture the damaged areas and the dimensions. But basically, any dimension we need on the exterior of the property is captured. And the key here too is many customers opt to do this let's say before we come out and evaluate the damage, if that's what's required.
That's critical as well, because then we get all the measurements and we can spend a lot less time at the customer's property. We don't have to really measure anything. And we can really delve into the damage assessment with them and really help facilitate that claim. And we see actually a majority of our customers willing to use these tools, certainly during COVID, but even after it can really facilitate the work that's being done.
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Slide, A larger building.
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Additionally, if you think about this use for commercial properties-- and here's just one example-- but we use this extensively in the business insurance space as well. There could be some situations where the dynamic around a building could be incredibly complicated. But in most situations, this works. It works for individual structures. It works for strip malls. It works for office buildings.
And again, think about all the dimensions and measurements that you might encounter in a commercial structure. And this has been really facilitative for us to help move the claim along.
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Slide, Virtual Measurement, 3D Design model. Two 3D models of a house. Original on left, 3D on right. On the right the exteriors are yellow.
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The other neat thing that tools like this do is essentially, they're creating a 3D, almost think of it as like a CAD/CAM type image of your property. All the measurements are there and all the dimensions.
And so this is a leave behind for our customers. And so if they're going to do some remodeling in the future or want to make some other changes to their home, they have all their measurements. They have the structure. They can even do what ifs, like in the situation, just a simple example that's saying, let's say our house was gray on the left and we said, hey, what would it look like if it was yellow?
And so those types of creative what ifs that you might have in this type of visual CAD/CAM type situation is a great capability for customers and they get to keep that. So even in small ways like that, there's a huge benefit to some of these tools.
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Slide, Drone, Onsite Inspection. 700 plus trained FAA certified, approximately 130,000 flights. Images, Residential, a tree fallen on a house. Commercial, a damaged building by a high way. Environmental, a contaminated river.
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But let's say the damage is so extensive that we really need to get out there and do a much more in-depth investigation or maybe over even a span or a distance here. We've had our own drone program for years. We've got approximately 700 of our claim professionals-- the same people that are evaluating the damage are also certified to fly the drones via the FAA.
And you can see we've had more than 130,000 flights. This can be super helpful when there's complicated situations. If you think of exterior damage to properties, about half the time in any given claim organization, a claim may have exterior damage. And of that group, about half of those have steep or complex roofs that might require us to bring someone in from outside, maybe a vendor with special rigging, et cetera, to help assess the damage let's say on the roofs or somewhere.
So having the drones allows us to not have to schedule a second visit or a second appointment to do that or to coordinate that activity. We can get it once and done when we go to our customer's property. And it's been also hugely important to assess things like, if you see on the right hand side of the screen, you might know we had an oil spill, an environmental issue on the right. And we could fly the drone up and down the river and assess the degree of damage.
There's all sorts of ways that we can utilize this technology. We can even have experts remotely looking through the eyes of the drone while it's flying in real time to assess damage and also give guidance to the pilot if there are certain things we need to see. So there's a tremendous amount going on here. You can see our vendor partner Aloft here that we do a lot of work with.
But this has been a huge benefit for us as claims get more complicated and we have to get our eyes on them directly.
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Slide, Managed Contractor Experience. Customers, enhances customer experience. Digital platform manages the repair process. 75% job schedule status. Contractors, network of quality vetted contractors.
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One other comment I would make in terms of extension of these digital platforms inside the property environment is-- and there's companies working on this to different degrees but we've seen a big benefit. And basically, being able to extend this ecosystem even into the space of contractors that might be doing remodeling for a customer of their damage.
And we don't have enough time today to dig into this one in detail but our customers really consider the process done when the damage has been fully resolved and they're back to being able to live normally. And many customers might have a contractor or sets of contractors they're comfortable working with, which is great. Sometimes they don't.
And so us being able to create that connectivity for them and to do it inside of a digital ecosystem so that they can facilitate getting contractors to come in after we've evaluated the damage really helps move that loss along and smooths out the process. And we've seen this ecosystem extend even into this space working with some of our partners like Westhill Corporation. So just one more example in the property space of how these tools have been utilized.
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Slide, Auto Damage. Images of auto damage and accidents.
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So that's a little bit on property. Let's switch gears. You'll see some similarities, albeit implemented differently in the auto arena. And so again, we're going to be focusing on auto physical damage, not in the liability world today.
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Slide, Auto Claim Process Innovation. From left to right, event happens, report damage, evaluation, pay slash repair.
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And we'll take again, kind of move through the process of a claim occurs and where are we using which tools and which parts of the process and why is it impactful.
So
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Slide, First Notice of Loss. Digital, P.I. Mobile app. Bar graph where 2018 is about one tenth of 2021. Voice, Express event aware IVR. Bar graph, 2021 is about 60% the size of 2018.
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stepping back on auto, if you think about a customer that might be in an accident wants to notify us essentially that they've had a claim. So they would call that first notice of loss or notice of loss. But one thing we've seen a big change in the last few years is the amount of our customers that are interested in using digital channels versus some of the traditional voice channels.
And we've added a lot of technology so that let's say if a hail event is happening in a certain city, we know that. We know where the customer is calling from. We can route those claims, provide sort of fast path options and all that on the voice channels. And sometimes our customers just want to speak with someone, which we completely understand. And those voice channels will always exist from that perspective, and to have more of a consultative process.
But we've seen a dramatic increase in the digital path. And in our case, that's at our travelers.com website, or if you're a customer, your My Traveler's web experience or the mobile app that we have.
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Slide, First Notice of Loss. Digital, telematics, voice. Bar graph future.
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And that's key because we can get a lot of really critical information early on in the process that helps then chart the course for the rest of the claim.
And one thing I'd mention as we look into the future in this space of notice of loss-- telematics, particularly in the auto space we think is going to play a huge role, not just in notifying us that there might have been an accident, but providing a lot more information that's useful to help resolve the claim quickly.
We're going to spend a few minutes on this right at the end, just as a little bit of a focus topic. So I won't do too much on this now, but wanted to make sure I mention that because we do see that playing a critical role.
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Slide, Appraisal Channel Modeling. A funnel with various spheres in its mouth labeled year make model, photos, point of impact, location, deployed air bag, fluid leaking. Arrow to funnel labeled Enhanced modeling based on industry data AI. A tube trails from the end of the funnel and reads early total loss predictor, direct repair program DRP, virtual inspection AI powered, field severity highly skilled, virtual visit, Estimate review.
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But up to this point in time-- and let's say if you may or may not have telematics-- really based on a fairly small number of data points.
And there's more than this, but these are just some examples you see in the upper left. You have fluids leaking. Did your airbag deploy, et cetera. Based on that criteria, we've built these predictive analytics-- and sometimes they're AI-driven-- that help us understand OK, what's the best path to help the customer remediate this damage and get their vehicle back to pre-loss conditions.
And we have this ability, even just based on a few photos, to understand whether the vehicle might be a total loss and determine that right out of the gate. That's a different path, let's say if your vehicle is a total loss versus whether it's repairable.
If it's repairable, there's a number of options. Many carriers in the industry have relationships with direct repair programs. It's kind of a concierge service. You bring your vehicle into a repair facility and they can assist in evaluating the damage. Maybe you get a rental car there. That can be a really great experience.
A lot of those experiences are also highly digitized these days and kind of operating inside of a customer's digital platform. Also there's virtual inspection tools, just like we talked about in property. And we'll touch on a couple of those in the auto arena here. And then of course, we have our field appraisers. Sometimes we really do need to get our eyes on it. And we have an expert group of hundreds and hundreds of appraisers that can get out there and see the vehicle.
So
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Slide, Auto Virtual Inspection. Smart phone app displays flow chart. Left to right, App installation, user login, validate VIN, Guided photo capture.
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let's talk about a couple of the kind of digitally-enhanced mechanisms inside the auto arena. So here's one example worked on via our close partner, CCC. And you can see we have a 4.6 rating. So you know it's well thought of, if you go out to the App Store. And essentially, this is very similar-- so I won't play a video this time-- of what you saw in the property, where you're going around the vehicle and just taking several photos around the vehicle.
And over here, here's the resultant damage you can see in the right rear portion of the vehicle.
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Slide, Auto Virtual Inspection. Images of an auto with colors on the damaged part. Text, Repairable, smart estimate, non reparable, smart total loss.
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Moving forward inside the app, then what the AI tools do that our partners CCC have built, is you can see that they're determining the degree of deflection and also the damaged area of the vehicle. That's critical. And it's all being done basically by the predictive system because then we can determine, hey, is this something that we can repair and should go down that path.
If it is, we can start building the estimate really with the AI tool. And up to this point, maybe we have an expert take a look at that estimate once it's been partially built by the system. Very soon, that won't be necessary. Some would argue we're almost at that point now.
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Slide, Virtual Inspection, Smart Total Loss. From left to right, additional information, TRV appraiser, vehicle valuation.
(SPEECH)
And also it can determine, hey, is this something that's going to be difficult to repair that might need to be a total loss?
And if so, we can kind of start this process of a smart total loss. And what's really neat is, let's say you're a customer and you're using the app here on the left, if the app's determining that, hey, there's a degree of likelihood this could be a total loss, it can intervene in the process and say, hey, we have reason to believe that we have some significant damage here. Could you take a few more photos that maybe help us better understand the condition of your vehicle?
And so we can get all that work done sort of seamlessly inside the same process and start that process of building out even a smart estimate for the vehicle valuation related to a total loss and get a long way down that path. And again, this is something that we're very excited about in the future.
And if you think about a vehicle as opposed to a home, one reason that our partner CCC can do this so well is you have a certain vehicle. Let's say you have a Toyota Corolla. You know what's behind the panel and what's behind that. You know all the parts. Homes can be a little bit different, right, from property to property. But with a vehicle make and model, you really can line up what's damaged, what's likely to be damaged.
And that's how we get to this point of being able to build out these very customized and accurate estimates.
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Auto, Virtual Visit. Images of a broken fender. On smartphone. Text, Customer. On desktop, text, TRV appraiser. A man in a video call.
(SPEECH)
Another thing we can do too, and again, similar to what we talked about on the property side, is kind of that virtual video interaction where we're taking video, we're taking still photos from our side. So a customer just has to show us the property.
Again during COVID, we saw considerable uptake in requests for customers to use this technology. And so it's great it was in place.
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Enhanced digital interaction. Text, Unified chat, SMS, live chat, Co browse, secure messaging.
(SPEECH)
And the other thing that we focused a lot on as well, if you even move beyond some of the video and some of the measurement capabilities and criteria that we're using, and you move down the process, and you think about the customer sentiment-- in the past, we typically, like many in the industry, we might have grabbed information from customers at the end of the claim process to find out how it went.
And
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Evolution of Customer Sentiment. Flow chart from left to right, F.N.O.L., Inspection, DRP, Payment, Resolution. A bar along the whole flow chart labeled continuous listening.
(SPEECH)
what we've seen evolving is the ability really to just link in throughout the whole digital cycle of the claim process the ability to listen and allow a customer to raise their hand and say, hey, I've got a question or I'm not sure what comes next.
So if we've gone through, and we've done all the inspections, and they're now ready to take the next stage and get the vehicle repaired, or there's maybe a payment due on the vehicle, we've built out a full suite of capabilities and basically, and this continuing listening process so that customer can raise their hand at any point as they're moving through the claim.
We think that's going to be critical moving forward, particularly as we get even more sophisticated with these digital tools. Because customers have to be able to-- hopefully, you provided great information throughout the process. But we also have to be able to stop and allow someone to raise their hand and have an intervention to really talk about hey, is there something we can do from a communications perspective and whether it's chatting, or SMS texting, or co-browsing.
(DESCRIPTION)
Previous slide, Enhanced digital interaction.
(SPEECH)
We built out this suite of tools. And we didn't have let's say SMS texting five or six years ago that was seamless. And it is now. And we're seeing customers use things like texting on upwards of greater than 50% of our claims. And that's their preferred method of interaction. And so that's something that we really encourage and works for many customers.
And
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Comprehensive Self Service. Image, a woman at her laptop. Texts, ePay, three pluses. Upload, two pluses. eSign, three pluses. Status, two pluses. SMS, three pluses.
(SPEECH)
if you even extend that a little bit further, if we think about the general concept of self-service and the website capabilities that we've built-- many in the industry are focusing on this and very shapes and forms-- but think beyond things like texting to e-payment, for instance, the ability for customers to upload anything at any point in the process, invoices or anything else, to sign everything electronically.
We've seen huge upticks in this utilization. Probably five or six years ago, e-pay was in the single digits. And we probably see that in the majority of our claims these days. And as you move down through this, and whether it's understanding a detailed claim status or again, doing the SMS texting, all these capabilities are critical to have in place and really help round out the rest of that claim experience beyond the initial inspection, but beyond the initial estimate, et cetera.
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Physical Damage, straight through processing, STP. Enhanced self services. Tow services, emergency services, rental, shop selection, scheduling appointment, fraud modeling, smart automated estimate. Graph, two columns, Virtual inspection, DRP. 10-30% STP.
(SPEECH)
And why that's really important for us moving forward is we see the opportunity for full, straight through processing, particularly of the more simple claims. And I gave you some examples earlier where we are already pre filling an estimate let's say of damage. And so all of those capabilities we talked about on the inspection side, on the self-service side, are all foundational for us to be able to basically build out some additional capabilities.
You can see some examples here on the left that once built out, we think a customer can take a-- let's say a simple auto loss all the way through the process-- and if it's by their choice-- seamlessly on a straight through basis. And again, if at any point in the process they want to raise their hand and say, hey, I'd love to chat with someone at this point, or I'm not sure what to do next, et cetera, we'll always have those capabilities in place.
But we think, not just ourselves, we see the industry moving in this direction as well for straight through processing. And
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, First Party Medical STP. Medical Bill Automation STP, FPM Claimant Automation STP. A column labeled future. The top is signaled and labeled as 25% STP.
(SPEECH)
we see it even in spaces like in first party medical. There's a coverage that let's say if someone was in your vehicle and was injured in an accident, we call that a first party medical coverage. Think of all the automation in the healthcare arena, particularly around more simple claims.
And as we get more bills electronically from providers, we can even automate first party medical claims for who knows? 25% plus or minus, relative to our customer base moving forward.
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Property, STP. Enhanced Self service, food spoilage, theft, personal article floater policies, loss assessment, contents only, building. A column labeled virtual inspection. The top is signaled and labeled as 10-30% STP.
(SPEECH)
And this works as well in property. So if you think again and look on the left side of the screen. These are different capabilities we're currently building out in addition to what we talked about.
And we think many of our simple property claims, on the simplest side-- something like food spoilage-- not a very complicated claim. And there may be some less complex claims in theft arena or small building claims. Personal articles we think also can be properly adjudicated on a straight through basis with all the right amount of information and with a lot of the capabilities that you see on the left. And that's what we're working to build out right now.
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Claim Telematics.
(SPEECH)
So I thought we'd switch gears or just maybe expand a little bit upon the topic of claim telematics as we had several questions about that in our final couple of minutes here. And many of you may be familiar, and perhaps to a great degree with everything that's going on in the telematics space around usage-based insurance and pay-as-you-drive. And that's a whole really interesting set of topics if you will on the front side of the business that many of you are familiar with.
I'm not going to spend time on that. More going to spend time on what do we think the opportunity is around telematics just in the claim space.
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Telematics Sources Today.
(SPEECH)
So stepping back and just to set the stage a little bit, there's multiple mechanisms of getting this telematics information. And we used to have devices we plugged into the vehicles. You can see the OB II there.
(DESCRIPTION)
Older technology, vehicle data and mileage.
(SPEECH)
There's many options with smartphone apps to gather information. Those also underpin many of the UBI options that we see out in the marketplace today.
(DESCRIPTION)
Easiest to deploy, bidirectional, cost effective.
(SPEECH)
There's kind of a combination of putting a tag in the vehicle to get a little bit more in the way of physics. Maybe that's in combination with a smartphone type app with that mobile and tag.
(DESCRIPTION)
Bluetooth tag, self installed, more reliable versus mobile.
(SPEECH)
There's connected car, where there might be a black box, if you will in the vehicle where the manufacturer is gathering all that information.
So
(DESCRIPTION)
Most comprehensive data, fast growing 10% of cars.
(SPEECH)
there's a number of places to gather the information. Probably the three on the right is directionally where we're headed as an industry, not as much the OBD II type devices. And so many of us would be familiar with this as we may be using some of the UBI tools today.
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Complexity of Telematics Data. Diagram, data source on left. In the center is Data capture, normalization, partnership platform. On the right is Travelers. On the top is the cloud.
(SPEECH)
One of the challenges-- and particularly, as you think about it on the claim side-- is if you think about those devices and the mechanisms by which we're gathering the information, there's actually a big question about how do we then gather that data and normalize it so it can be used. So let's say we wanted to use it for claim purposes.
Some of the auto manufacturers-- even if you look at the different vehicles they have-- they use different sensor sets, different software across their lines of vehicles. So it's not standardized. And then of course, if there's different companies out there also working with smartphones, they might also have different mechanisms around tracking the physics of the accident.
So there's a number of companies kind of operating in that central space that are going to hopefully be able to normalize this data so that can use more commonly. That's critical. So that you can end up connecting lots of carriers with lots of vehicle makes and models. And you can get some consistency and normalization around that data as it relates to interpreting what's happening, particularly if it's an event that has physics in it that may have be driven by an accident.
So that's critical. And these are evolving spaces right now. There's a lot of players across the board here. And it'll be really interesting to see how this pans out in the next few years. But some of the models are coming together and are going to allow for experiences something like you see here.
And just as an example--
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Event happens. Image, a bumper to bumper small accident. Smartphone with app display. Text, We received notification that you have been involved in an accident. Please confirm.
(SPEECH)
so if we say, hey, how is this telematics stuff going to work in the claim arena, just on a conceptual, hypothetical type basis? So regardless of whether it was a smartphone app or coming from the vehicle itself, we could be made available. A customer would opt in and say yes, if I'm in an accident, sure, let some people know so that I can get help.
And so an accident occurs, it's communicated to let's say us in this instance, we can immediately ask if they need any help, maybe medical services. Are they going to need alternative transportation, maybe a tow's involved, et cetera. Do you want to start the claim process now or we can do that later? We could basically propose this immediately to the customer, assuming they're in a safe space and obviously able to work this process.
And
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Location Emergency Services. Map on smart phone with labels, Crash scene, Tow truck, repair facility, customer's home.
(SPEECH)
what's really interesting at that point in time if we're going to move forward is, OK, now we know where the crash scene is. We know where, if we need a tow truck, where that is, where the customer's property is, where the nearest repair facility for that vehicle is. We may have enough information about the physics of the accident to understand what needs to be done and whether it's a total loss or repairable.
So there's a lot that can be understood very early on in the claim process that might have taken a lot longer in prior days. And
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, A more complete view of the accident. A 5 by 3 collection of panels. The bottom five are separated by a red line from the 10 above it. The red line indicates the cloud connection. The bottom five read, weather road information other parties third party data photos. The 10 above read braking, occupant position, steering, airbag, speed, delta v and g force, seatbelts, distraction, data time location, point of impact.
(SPEECH)
so in terms of the type of information that we're talking about here, you can see kind of everything above the red line might be information that we get from the smartphone or the black box in the vehicle, relative to physics.
And we can also combine that with other information that's available. And
(DESCRIPTION)
Example data.
(SPEECH)
so we may know, OK, there was a hard braking event here. There were these G-Forces involved in the accident, the speed being traveled. We now know that exactly. Where the point of impact was, et cetera.
So we can start combining all this information essentially right out of the gates that might have been part of a regular claim assessment but could have taken a period of time, a lot of interviews. And you still wouldn't have had the degree of specificity around the physics. And
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Desktop display. Advance and expedite insights. Five adjustable spectrums, drivable, total loss, liability, subrogation, fraud. Below them is injury causality, other parties, plate reader, social platforms.
(SPEECH)
so that allows us to really change the process for our claim professionals because now we can almost present to them all this information.
We might know, OK, the vehicle definitely isn't drivable. It's most likely a total loss. There is or there isn't an opportunity for subrogation in this case. Here are some of the involved parties. All this can basically be presented as opposed to our claim professionals having to go out and gather piece by piece this information in various shapes and forms that we're not as empirical as we're going to be able to get in this case.
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Telematics claim transformation. Reduce cycle times from weeks to days, date of loss shop intake inspection repair ready for pickup. Accident physics transform injured party resolution. Early injured party identification, accident physics causality, treatment patterns, resolution strategies.
(SPEECH)
And then think as well about where this might take us. Along the top here is for physical damage. We think that we could be dramatically reducing cycle times, let's say if you have a simple accident where no one's injured, throughout this process for all the reasons we just talked about.
And then think about how the accident physics transform resolving injured party claims too. Because now we actually understand the G-Forces involved. You can start to link all of that with the injuries being claimed, and determine treatment and resolution in a way that is much quicker and facilitates that process much better than before.
So it really changes the game around injury. We have a lot going on in that space. Actually, we don't a ton of time because I think I need to finish up here today. But hopefully, that gives you a little sense on the claim telematics side of how we see things beginning to play out.
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Delivering seamless claim experiences. Squares of people smiling.
(SPEECH)
And we believe that in every case really that we're aware of, these tools are providing a big benefit for our customer, a lot more options, because they can choose kind of how they want this to work inside their own digital ecosystem. And that's just a huge focus for us throughout the process. But we really think it ends up being a win-win-win.
And just to give maybe one last example here-- and this is actually on a radio show where one of the hosts had an experience with a Traveler's claim that used a bunch of these tools. Thought we'd just play that quickly for you.
(DESCRIPTION)
The host's square highlights in red.
(SPEECH)
You're listening to The Deener Show on ESPN 680. Now here's Drew Deener and Billy Reed.
By the way, yesterday when I said Travelers was going to get it if they didn't get in touch with me-- I had maybe the best customer experience of my life with Travelers Insurance yesterday.
Really?
Because a giant tree fell in my backyard. I don't know if you saw the picture on Facebook.
Oh, no.
A weeping Willow smashed my fence. And everybody knows, I put them on notice yesterday. Calls me at 10:30, says, all right, can you get home? I said, yeah. Video conferences the damage. So he doesn't have to come out. He's like facetiming the damage here.
All right? So he does that for about five minutes or so, says, all right, I'll call you back with an estimate. Calls me back with an estimate. The damage-- like $3,100 worth of damage. I've got $1,000 deductible. I had $2,100 in my account by 2:30 in the afternoon.
Wow that is great.
Unbelievable. Paid for the fence, the tree removal, power washing, and staining the entire fence because part of that fence will look different than the rest.
That is cool.
The best customer experience I have-- I mean the claim started at 10:30. By 2:30, there was cash in my account. You've got to be kidding me. It was great.
OK. So hopefully-- that's a little entertaining, obviously.
(DESCRIPTION)
The two video feeds of Joan Woodward and Patrick Gee side by side.
(SPEECH)
But we do think that encapsulates when that process goes well and we're able to utilize a lot of these tools in conjunction with each other, that that is a kind of experience our customers can have. And we get a lot of that type of feedback, as these solutions come together for them.
That was just great and kind of fun to hear a radio talk show host have an experience like that. And I'm sure a lot of other thousands of our customers do. So thank you for your leadership in the industry. I mean, not just a Travelers. You really recognized throughout the industry as a being a leader on this tech-enabled digitization that we're all going through.
All right. We're going to turn the tables on our audience for a moment and we're going to ask you a question about how would you rate your organization's use of tech-enabled claim technologies. So it just popped up on your screen, folks. And you're in the insurance business here. So how would you rate your own organization kind of digitization, tech-enabled claim, claim sophistication if you will?
So we're fully immersed, we've begun using them and have a lot to go, or we still have a long way to go?
(DESCRIPTION)
Joan squints at the screen, then puts on a pair of glasses.
(SPEECH)
So we're fully immersed, we've been using them, but have room to expand, or you're just at ground zero starting in kindergarten here? OK, I'm looking at the results. And we have-- most folks are saying-- 43% of us are saying we've begun to use them but have room to expand.
I really love this, Pat, because it looks like about 27% of the audience is saying they're fully immersed in the tech-enabled claim technology process. So it looks about 2/3 of the audience here is well on their way or they think they've got it. And I think that's a terrific outcome. Do you have any thoughts? Does that line up with what you're thinking in terms of our agents and brokers and how they're sophisticated here on this claim?
We think there's been a tremendous amount of uptake in a lot of these tools the last few years, both among the carriers as well as among our agents and brokers. And of course, our customers really demand it. It's what they're used to. And one thing we constantly try to reinforce is our customers are of course, comparing us to their latest best example in any business, or industry, or interaction, not one that's just in the insurance space.
So that's really the comparative for us here. And I think as well, as I think about us, we feel like we've made some progress. And we're super excited because we know there's a whole lot more to get done here.
Great. Great. All right, so I have a couple of questions. And we're going to take a bunch from the audience. So really looking back over your entire career of the evolution of claims, what has been the biggest game changer to date in your mind?
Well, certainly the smartphone's been big. I didn't really reflect on it here, but if I think about all the equipment let's say a property claim professional had to carry around with them before-- video cameras, and still photos, and audio recording devices, measuring tools, ladders, all this stuff-- basically, you can think those all got subsumed into smartphone apps, right?
And then the smartphone is also helping drive the experience for our customers here because all this technology is being woven together inside of an experience that hopefully they're very accustomed to. So I think that's been key for us.
I think a lot of the arena, particularly related to our conversation today around photo analytics, has been very big. Because it really jumpstarted everything that we're doing in the geospatial realm, as well as our ability to determine degrees of damage, whether it's to homes, or businesses, or vehicles, and set us up for this straight through processing that we talked about.
So just out of the gates-- and of course, if you overlay that with AI or machine learning and the capabilities that come along with that, obviously, those do a tremendous amount to enhance the experience and really pull it all together for us.
Great. Great. So a number of questions coming in around inflation. So everyone is really concerned about supply chain issues throughout the whole ecosystem of our economy and globally. What are you seeing in terms of inflation in the claim process and supply chain disruption?
Well, OK. So good. Then stepping aside then from the digital discussion for a minute, because to your point, this is a time-sensitive topic because we're all seeing this. And maybe I'll just give an example or two of what we've been seeing. Let's start with auto. And this could be private passenger autos in the commercial space or it could just be personal autos in the personal space.
But I think we've all seen inventories are down 60, 70, 80%, dealer inventories. So new vehicles, as a result, the price of used vehicles has gone up, up, up, 45, 50%, even if you look at the past quarter or two. That in turn drives let's say the valuation of a total loss, if someone has that type of damage to their vehicle.
So certainly, all carriers to varying degrees based on their books of business are seeing these inflationary dynamics in the auto side, as well as things like labor, and labor repair shops, and for anyone, really involved in the ecosystem. So there's a lot going on in this space.
And that's probably what you see in some of the comments from companies that are starting to make these observations, notwithstanding everything we all see every day as we see some empty store shelves here and there. We see challenges of getting certain supplies, what's going on outside our ports, backups of trains, China even throttling back some of their factories because of energy issues. A lot of that stuff may not have fully played out in the supply chain at this point.
I would mention as well maybe on the property side, the cost of lumber-- I think everyone saw that spike over the last year or so and that's coming back down. But I'd say even the other basket of goods that we use to fix commercial or personal properties-- we're seeing inflation running through those fairly consistently as well. So all of this is playing out in our space as it is for all of us personally, as we try to shop ourselves.
OK, good. Question coming in from Jessica Ponticelli. Could this information you've provided here in terms of all this AI and data analytics be utilized to assist with liability investigations? So would this data be admissible for example, in court, she's asking.
Yes, and some of it is. So let's say in certain situations, we do utilize the black box information from vehicles already today in certain liability situations. I would mention as well-- and I you know we didn't have enough time today to get into maybe the use of a lot of these tools in the more complex claim space.
But if you think about fraud models or early severity models-- is a claim going to have the tendency-- an automobile to be a higher severity claim let's say on the injury side, or voice analytics, or even coverage determination. There's a lot of arenas where we're utilizing these predictive analytics and AI tools as well. So I would say it's just as healthy in those arenas. And I think you see you'll see many carriers utilizing these tools in that vein.
OK. Actually, let's do a follow on about commercial lines. So Marilyn Blake asked, do you find a difference in who uses technology for inspection, self-service for personal lines as opposed to commercial lines? Is this embedded in our commercial lines claim?
It is embedded. And it's going to-- the process is sometimes a little bit different for commercial lines. They may already have let's say a repair or a direct repair facility they work with. So maybe they don't need the virtual inspection tool for the private passenger auto that was on their policy or their heavy equipment let's say in commercial.
However in the property space, oftentimes we find the tools almost equally applicable as personal lines. If a business has been damaged, trees falling on it, that's not too different than a personal lines claim. And oftentimes, we use the tool similarly. Also it's very much-- it can be up to the customer too. People had varying perspectives, particularly during the height of COVID for how comfortable they might be with someone coming to their property, notwithstanding coming in their homes.
So we also saw utilization really spiking in those types of situations. And sometimes that was business as well as personal lines.
OK. Quick question-- to clarify, are you able to know when a car accident happens before the insured places a claim?
So if we just talk about the technology, I would say absolutely, theoretically, yes. Now from our view-- and all this is still being sorted through-- these types of scenarios with auto telematics, a customer is going to opt in to say, hey, if I get an accident, yes let these people know. And if they opted out of that, then obviously their privacy would be protected there.
But there's also a mechanism where they may just want to talk to someone about the damage they've had and decide whether they want to proceed forward with the claim or not. We offer those services extensively. And so it might just be, hey, the vehicle let us just know they're in an accident.
And then we will speak with them before we proceed forward with the claim or have some kind of an interaction because they might want to know simply what their deductible is before they decide to file the claim. Or if they're not at fault, maybe they want to proceed down a third-party path. These will all be decisions they can make based on consultation with their agent or with us.
So just by calling in to say, hey, this just happened to me. What is my deductible? Should I file a claim? So by calling in ask those questions, it doesn't trigger a claim, correct?
No, that's right. And we actually have a whole process for our customers if they just really want to talk to us about what happened that's very separate of the claim process.
Right. Right. OK. Sasha Romanowski asks, so overall, what have these technologies done for claims and customer premiums? So are customers are paying more or less on average after all this tech adoption?
So as it relates to just the effect of this technology, I would say less because that lowers the cost of our business. And as we all know, insurance is a very viable marketplace, very competitive marketplace on the price side. And so this gets worked into. So if our claim costs go down, our business partners who are pricing the product can take those lower claim costs and roll that through our product.
And we have seen our costs come down with the use of these tools. And we have lower claim costs as a result. And that has positively, or let's say favorably affected the pricing for our customers. All of the things being equal.
Right. OK. Excellent. Another question on supply chain. How has Travelers address-- this is from Maria Millar-- how is Travelers addressing the current shortage of parts, i.e. catalytic converters and other aftermarket parts, having limited options? How do we address the customer's vehicle if it can't be repaired immediately because parts are not available?
Right. So we're going to support our customer, obviously through that process. I would say we haven't felt a wholesale-- let's say a significant impact due to parts shortages in auto yet. Maybe there's a little more of that that's coming. But that hasn't been a significant factor for us.
We've seen some slowdowns in spots. There's also issues around-- in some cases, repair shops are also trying to hire more employees. That could also be a reason that the claim could get slowed down. But we haven't seen significant part shortages let's say bringing everything to a halt and repairing vehicles-- not yet.
So that process has been moving a little bit slower in some spots than others. And certainly, there have been some parts impacts. But it hasn't been a significant issue for us yet in terms of a lot of customers just having to stand on the sidelines and wait.
OK. Another question coming in about drones. Does drone feeds-- do they feed you live info so you don't lose the data? Or if it's lost somehow or crashes, what happens? Have we had that experience?
And so you can obviously view it live. But it's being recorded both on the drone and we can also record it on our side too. So that let's say there was a drone crashed or something like that and the data was corrupted. We could have a copy of that. And that's an unusual situation, anyway.
But yes, it's all being recorded. And we get to review it with the customers immediately afterwards, as well as obviously using it for our purposes of determining the degree of damage.
OK. And this one coming in from Chris Murphy. Does Hover require the homeowner or adjuster to give one known measurement that the rest of the measurements are then scaled to? I'm trying to figure out how this is so accurate. It's amazing.
It is amazing. And I would say that the early iterations in the industry of measurement tools did require that. They might say, hey, hold up a piece of paper that's 8 and 1/2 by 11. And it's not required in the AI tools that they have. They're so good now.
And I would also mention-- I didn't talk a lot about the use of those measurement tools for interior-- we really believe we're on the cusp. And there's a number of companies out there that are making tremendous progress around interior measurements as well. So, hey, walk around my damaged room and all the inside measurements are done for us as well. That's basically imminent.
But on the exterior side, no. The customer doesn't have to do any of that. The AI and the predictive image analytics do a tremendous job with that. And we've done many, many tests of physical measurements to compare to what our Hover measurements are and it's extremely accurate.
OK. Another question-- can you measure townhomes that are in the middle of a block? Now that's a good question.
We can. So let's say you had a townhome. There were a couple of townhomes on either side. We would do the front and rear. We could still resolve the roof. We could get the roof. And we could get the front and the rear planes as well.
Obviously, if there was interior damage on one of the side walls, we wouldn't have insight into that. But we do use it regularly on townhomes as well.
OK, great. I think we're out of time, Pat. And I would love to invite you back in the future on a webinar to talk about all the other things we didn't have time for today. But listen, it was terrific. And thank you so much for joining us. And thank you for all you do for the whole industry and as well as Travelers.
(DESCRIPTION)
Slide, Wednesdays with Woodward Webinar Series. Upcoming Webinars. Text, The Changing Risk Landscape, Underwriting for the New Normal.
(SPEECH)
Now folks, I wanted to bring your attention to our webinar next week. So one week from today at 1 o'clock Eastern time, I'm going to be interviewing our Chief Underwriting Officer, Rick Keegan. Rick does not speak publicly very often about the ways we think about underwriting here at Travelers.
He's going to spend a lot of time talking about business insurance, commercial insurance, underwriting, think about risks, like cyber, and pandemic, and other things. So again, that's Rick Keegan next Wednesday, the 27th with me.
And then a week after that, we're going to talk about the very sad phenomenon in the society, frankly, is opioid use. And the pandemic-era crisis that more people are using opioids. And of course, how do we break this cycle?
(DESCRIPTION)
November 3, The Pandemic Era Opioid Crisis, Where are we now? How can we break the cycle? Milken Institute's Sabrina Spitaletta and Travelers' Rich Ives.
(SPEECH)
We see a lot of this in our claim data with workers compensation, as you all can understand, our insurance brokers and agents out there.
This is a very, very important and serious topic. I have an expert coming in from the Milken Institute Center for Public Health and also a Traveler's specialist here on opioids and Workers' Comp, Rich Ives. So you don't want to miss that one on November the 3rd.
So Pat, let me turn it back to you. Any closing thoughts for the group? By the way, you can register for any of our webinars. It's in the chat there, travelersinstitute.org.
But Pat, any closing thoughts? Any advice for agent and broker communities?
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Slide, The tech enable insurance claim revolution. Logos, Metro Hartford Alliance, University of South Carolina Darla Moore School of Business, Travelers Institute, U Conn School of Business, M.S. in Financial Technology, American Property Casualty Insurance Association, Insuring America, a.p.c.i dot org.
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Well, I know that all of our communities are pursuing a lot of these technologies as it might be relevant for them in a whole bunch of shapes and forms. I would simply say, please give us a call if you got any further questions about this or want to understand anything about this process, and pros and cons.
And the neat thing is we're trying to make as much of this available to our agents and brokers as well, the output of this, as well as the core capabilities themselves like geospatial. And we do have some more work to do there in some spots. And we're continuing to move forward to hopefully bring those capabilities along as much as we need to.
Terrific. All right. Pat, thank you. And everyone, thank you for joining us today. We're thrilled to have you as part of these sessions. So sign up for the next one. And stay safe, my friends. Thanks again.
Summary
What did we learn? Here are the top takeaways from “The Tech-Enabled Insurance Claim Revolution.”
- Smartphones have been a game changer. “If I think of all the equipment a property claim professional had to carry around with them before – video cameras, cell phones, audio recording devices, measuring tools, ladders – all this stuff basically got subsumed into smartphone apps,” Gee remarked. According to him, texting has also quickly grown to become the preferred method of interaction for more than 50% of customers.
- Customer demand is driving advancement of tech-enabled insurance claims. “Our customers are comparing us to their latest, best example in any business, industry or interaction, not one that’s just in the insurance space,” said Gee.
- COVID-19 hastened the shift as well. During the pandemic, customers opted for virtual claim inspections at more than double the pre-COVID rates. In addition, Gee pointed to electronic payment, file sharing and document signing, along with digital claim status tracking and automated customer communications as tools that round out a full suite of capabilities beyond the initial inspection and estimate.
- Insurers are combining technologies in powerful ways. Rapidly evolving tools that gather and analyze information about incidents and outcomes enable insurers to provide highly customized, data-driven resolutions to even some of the most complex claims – often reducing processing time from weeks to hours. Some exciting advancements include:
- Using drones for remote damage assessment. Gee noted that more than 700 Travelers’ claim professionals are FAA-certified drone pilots – a capability that offers unprecedented speed, accuracy and safety for inspecting locations that may be dangerous or inaccessible.
- Layering data on aerial photography to map damage. Gee shared that Travelers uses geospatial tools and artificial intelligence to map catastrophe damage over aerial imagery of impacted regions after an event or as it’s happening. He said that in some circumstances, Travelers is aware of damage to a property even before a customer.
- Creating detailed structural schematics from just a few photos. Pictures from a smartphone can now offer enough information to build a 3D model, down to the width and height of every door and window. “It’s amazing and extremely accurate,” Gee said.
- Leveraging telematics to respond to auto incidents. Telematics can now instantly pinpoint locations of a motor vehicle crash and the nearest responders, get details about the vehicles and people involved, and capture and analyze data about the physics of a collision. This means customers get quicker, more personalized resolutions.
- Using drones for remote damage assessment. Gee noted that more than 700 Travelers’ claim professionals are FAA-certified drone pilots – a capability that offers unprecedented speed, accuracy and safety for inspecting locations that may be dangerous or inaccessible.
- Finally, the industry is on board for the tech-enabled claims revolution. Two-thirds of participating insurance professionals reported they were already “fully immersed” in the digital claims process or had at least begun using these tools. This mirrored Gee’s assessment of the present and hopes for the future: “We feel like we’ve made some progress, and we’re super excited because we know there’s a whole lot more to get done here.”
Presented by the Travelers Institute, the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, the MetroHartford Alliance, the Risk and Uncertainty Management Center at the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business and the Master’s in Financial Technology (FinTech) Program at the University of Connecticut School of Business.
Speaker
Patrick Gee
Senior Vice President, Personal Insurance Claim, Auto and Property Claim, Travelers
Host
Joan Woodward
President, Travelers Institute; Executive Vice President, Public Policy, Travelers