Elizabeth DeVito focuses on mitigating risks for Hartford Steam Boiler's policyholders

Elizabeth DeVito, vice president of internet-of-things solutions at the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection & Insurance Co. in Hartford, Conn., has managed HSB's personal lines residential IoT channel for about five years.

Out of the crowded field of IoT technologies for creating "smart homes," HSB focuses on evaluating and selecting those technologies that mitigate risks of water damage, fire damage and equipment failure, DeVito says.

Since 2018, she's led HSB's work in smart home IoT technology, overseeing technology testing by HSB's engineers at its Hartford lab, in employees' homes through pilot programs and in a mocked-up smart home in Amelia, Ohio. Creating the Amelia smart home — which is now being rebuilt with new technology — presented an opportunity to "practice and play" with new technology, to train claims staff and to bring in HSB's carrier partners to inform them and raise their IoT awareness, she says.

HSB offers niche coverages for insurance carriers through a business-to-business-to-consumer white label model. The carriers cede the risk to HSB and HSB adjudicates all claims. HSB reinsures specialty commercial and homeowner lines for about 300 carriers.

HSB prefers to offer a service component with its niche offerings — that's the IoT component for its residential lines. "We got on the bandwagon of IoT years ago," she explains, helping HSB's carrier partners access IoT technology and integrate it into their offerings.

After testing and evaluating IoT technology, HSB accesses the best technologies through partnerships, acquisitions or building its own, then offers that access to its carrier partners in the HSB reinsurance offerings, adds DeVito. 

Now, HSB integrates IoT technology for its reinsurance clients on both the commercial and residential sides to help those clients increase their profitability or win new business. "What we typically like to do is add IoT into a reinsurance offering that is already standing. But we also use IoT as a lever to get reinsurance clients," details DeVito.

The idea is to put the technology into homes or businesses to try to prevent losses, and HSB is particularly interested in applying the technology to its coverages to reduce its own expenses and losses, she says.

IoT can also boost an insurance carrier's brand with customers or potential customers. "If you can get technology free through your carrier and it helps you become more aware of what might be going on in your home, alert you to something, maybe even roll a truck out to help fix something before it breaks — those are all going to inure to brand loyalty down the road," DeVito says.

Incorporating artificial intelligence or machine learning into the technology can also help predict potential failures and ward off or minimize claims. Eventually, data accumulated from IoT sensors could be analyzed for more accurate predictions of risk, which would benefit the insurer and translate to reduced rates, DeVito adds.

"Right now it's still in such an early phase, in my opinion. We've still got a lot of educating to do at the carrier level as well as the end-user level," says DeVito. "It's been a slow slog." IoT tech is still "clunky," and hurdles remain for user adoption and bringing technologies to market. 

"Everyone has an eye toward: What data can I get from this technology?' But what really needs to come first is getting the technology out into the marketplace," she says. "There's no one standard within the smart home space that helps bring all of these disparate technologies together into a seamless customer experience." 

DeVito also works with other areas within HSB to examine technology to apply to virtual inspection tools, for example, or to deploy AI to reduce the company's expense, improve the claims experience for the policyholder and to capture data. 

Years of IoT evaluations and testing have delivered one overall lesson she says: "Simple is best. The simplest user experience that doesn't require friction from a contractor perspective is really the way to go." For example, HSB evaluated in-line water-shutoff technologies for detecting potential leaks and preventing water damage, but they all required a plumber for installation. Then, the technology would sometimes mistakenly shut the water off when the homeowner was using an unexpectedly high volume of water, such as watering the lawn. 

"It can be the best potential solution, but it can also be very awkward from a homeowner's perspective," she shares. "If a piece of technology that your insurer provided you with the objective of being a protector — to protect your family, to protect your home, to make your home safe — if it doesn't work, you're going to assume that the insurer was partially at fault."

HSB ultimately chose a different water shut-off technology for its IoT offering: It can detect the presence of a potential water leak and allow the user to shut off the supply, but it won't turn it off automatically.