Liberty Mutual is piloting a new home insurance tool, Dwellbeing, designed to help homeowners maintain the infrastructure of their property and reduce claims.
The platform, currently available to only a selected group of customers, offers a customized website where users can manage heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, plumbing, common house appliances and home safety gadgets. The technology does rely on self-input information from customers to work, but automatically sends mobile notifications to homeowners when maintenance tasks are required.
Individuals are asked set up a personalized profile online that will answer all pertinent questions about the inner workings of their home, a process that takes up to 10 minutes, Liberty Mutual says. Once setup, Dwellbeing also offers users access to a list of service providers.
“Dwellbeing starts to teach people about their homes immediately, for example giving them tips to identify if their heating system is forced air, baseboard, radiator, etc.,” said Adam L’Italien, VP of global consumer markets innovation at Liberty Mutual. “We are exploring introducing capabilities like image recognition and integration with home inspection data, and as these systems become ‘smarter,’ auto discovery and monitoring to further simplify this process.”
Dwellbeing was developed by Solaria Labs, Liberty Mutual’s network of innovation centers in Boston and Singapore. The insurer also sees an opportunity to work with its established smart home partners to incorporate new features in the future. Dwellbeing, currently in beta testing, is expected to be available to the broader general public this spring.
Total Home Score
Liberty Mutual also announced the roll out of Total Home Score, a tool created to assist homebuyers in determining hidden factors of a neighborhood before moving in.
The product, available only in Massachusetts and the Greater Chicago area, helps illuminate neighborhoods through 3-D maps, rating road safety and noise levels. Solaria Labs first launched Total Home Score in October, after internally customizing a Shine API using open city data,
The platform’s Road Score service measures the prevalence of aggressive driving in selected areas, while the Quiet Score estimates the noise levels surrounding a home due to traffic and public transportation. L’Italien says Solaria Labs plans to add additional features to Total Home Score in the near future.
