Zurich Aon clean energy insurance insurtech news

Zurich, Aon launch clean energy insurance facility; Mercury expands virtual home inspections: Insurtech news

July 4, 2024 4:56 PM

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Zurich and Aon launch clean energy insurance facility

Zurich and Aon launch coverage for blue and green hydrogen projects around the globe. The initiative between Zurich, the lead insurer, and Aon, the broker, aims to accelerate the development of clean hydrogen projects.

Sierra Signorelli, CEO commercial insurance at Zurich, said in a statement: "Insurance is a key enabler to facilitate the net-zero transition, providing protection as well as risk expertise. Clean hydrogen has immense potential as an eco-friendly alternative to fossil fuels and we strongly believe it can play a critical role in the energy transition. We are proud to bring this ground-breaking initiative to the market together with Aon."

Mercury Insurance expands DIY home inspections

Mercury Insurance is offering DIY inspection services that use artificial intelligence via an app to policyholders in Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia. Flyreel is Mercury's virtual self inspection app technology partner.

Mercury Insurance Portfolio Underwriter Holly Sacks, said in a statement: "We do so much with smartphones now that giving our insureds the ability to use photos and video to capture and verify the characteristics of their property made so much sense. The AI in our app is top-class, making it super simple to complete a self-inspection. The step-by-step instructions are easy to follow and fun to use."

Cytora partners with property valuations solutions provider, e2Value

Cytora is providing a platform for underwriters in commercial, agricultural and residential property insurance that provides access to U.S. property data, through a new partnership with e2Value, a provider of property valuation solutions.

The property data includes points, such as a building's age, structural detail or safety features, to help carriers estimate reconstruction costs, as well as information on a property's valuation, like local wages and amenities. e2Value's data will be directly integrated with Cytora's risk processing platform, according to the press release.

In a statement, Juan de Castro, COO at Cytora, said, "This is another great step on our expansion plan in the US. It is the latest in a series of partnerships with innovative US companies that is rapidly increasing our data ecosystem. e2Value has a very powerful solution which leverages an impressive amount of information to take a lot of the risk and complication out of property insurance."

ZestyAI and Country Financial join to provide more accurate risk assessments

ZestyAI announced a partnership with Country Financial, a group of U.S. insurance and financial services companies that offers products in lines such as auto, home, life and commercial insurance.

Country Financial will incorporate ZestyAI's solutions and analytics directly into its underwriting processes to decrease processing time and increase transparency, aiming to provide its clients and representatives with a more streamlined and accurate insurance purchasing experience. The products will also optimize inspection resources, according to ZestyAI's press release.

Sapiens launches AI-powered, cloud-native platform, accelerated by recent integration with Microsoft

Sapiens International Corporation launched an AI-driven, open and integrated platform that supports end-to-end insurance processes across all lines of business. The platform utilizes data intelligence, machine learning (ML) and genAI capabilities.

"Sapiens' next generation enhanced platform empowers our customers to leverage AI across their business processes, enabling them to stay ahead, drive growth, and exceed customer expectations. By adopting the platform approach, streamlining our processes and leveraging shared foundations and technology engines, we deliver even greater value to our customers, more quickly than ever before," said Roni Al-Dor, Sapiens president and CEO, in the press release. "Sapiens integration with Microsoft Azure OpenAI accelerates the use of AI services across Sapiens Insurance Platform."

Sapiens chose Microsoft Azure as its cloud provider. The integration of AI across Sapiens' platform was accelerated by its integration with Microsoft, according to Sapiens.

"Our collaboration with Sapiens highlights Microsoft's dedication to empowering the insurance industry with transformative AI solutions. This collaboration not only showcases the potential of Microsoft Azure and our AI technologies but also sets a new standard for innovation within the insurance industry," said Patrice Amann, regional leader, financial services at Microsoft, in the release.

Tint launches a solution for Turo

Embedded insurance platform Tint has launched a solution for Turo, a peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace.

The solution allows Turo hosts to insure their cars when not being used on trips. Tint covers maintenance for the cars such as washes, detailing and fueling. The embedded insurance solution is part of Turo's new host services.

Tint's co-founders Matheus Riolfi and Jérôme Selle began their careers as early employees of Turo, which was founded in 2009.

Builders & Tradesmen's Insurance Services adopted Gradient AI’s underwriting solution

Builders & Tradesmen's Insurance Services, Inc. (BTIS), has adopted Gradient AI's underwriting solution to better predict risk and improve pricing accuracy of workers' compensation policies.

BTIS is a commercial insurance underwriting intermediary serving small businesses. The company wanted to improve its underwriting to write more profitable policies and to scale its workers compensation business.

"After seeing the success of Gradient AI with one of our carrier partners, we decided to integrate it with another carrier and into our proprietary workers' compensation underwriting platform," said Paul Hohlbein, president of BTIS, in a press release. "We evaluated several options and chose Gradient AI because of its leadership in the field. Leveraging AI is key to enhancing the underwriting process for our customers and carrier partners."

LossExpress launches digital vehicle title for total losses with Elephant Insurance

LossExpress, a lien and title release capabilities provider serving U.S. insurance carriers, has launched a fully digital vehicle title for total losses, in collaboration with Elephant Insurance, a digital auto insurance company.

Getting and transferring vehicle titles from owners to insurers in a total loss, known as title procurement, has been challenging because of multi-jurisdictional rules and requirements, time-consuming tracking of titles and documents, manual forms, and the time needed to produce new titles. Many carriers are outsourcing the handling of these functions to salvage companies and third parties.

LossExpress lets carriers streamline lien release and title procurement processes to resolve total loss claims faster, easier and more consistently.

"Policyholders deserve a smooth and expedient claims process, and that's what LossExpress' digital title procurement tool can help deliver," said Rhys Pearce, Head of Claims at Elephant. "The often frustrating vehicle titling process can be simplified and reduced from weeks or months, down to a matter of days. And that's a win for the customer."