LIDAR Technology and Claims

If you have never heard of LIDAR (short for Laser Imaging, Detection And Ranging) then don’t worry because you aren’t alone. It’s the technology that enables autonomous vehicles to interpret their surroundings and safely navigate the road.  LIDAR works by shooting a series of lasers at different points to create a 3D image of the surrounding area 🤓.

I have recently been moving house, and I was surprised to find that the latest iPhone 12 Pro comes with in-built support for LIDAR, allowing me to measure anything within a room such as wall space, depth, height and floor space simply by pointing the phone camera and letting the app do the work for me 😲 . Better still, the measurements are overlaid onto a photo of the specific place/object I am measuring and stored in my phone gallery.  LIDAR has helped me capture a 3D model of the interior of each room through the free app Matterport, as well as simulate what furniture would look like in-situ using the Ikea Place app.

It made me wonder whether any insurtechs had started to look at using this technology to improve insurance claims processes 🤔.

Looking at our vibrant tech partner eco-system there are some great insurtechs using technology to improve household claims.  Take Geox for example, whose patented AI leverages aerial imagery to extract rich, accurate and 3D property data 😎.  This creates a set of property analytics that can help validate more traditional property data sources, or assess roofing conditions, or automate repair and replacement costs without needing to send anyone on-site.  The service is available in the UK, US and Australia.   

Inside the home, insurtechs like Bdeo and Eviid focus on customers self-serving inspections using real-time video collaboration tools, where the agent can see what the customer sees, guiding them on what to do, or co-capture/bookmark/annotate the relevant evidence.   Livegenic have added some support for measurements within their self-serve inspection solution, but none of these vendors are using LIDAR yet.One insurtech that is using 3D images is VTS, whose virtual technology helps to create a ‘3D virtual twin’ of a room with a handy integration into Xactimate, with clients including Liberty Mutual and Travelers.

Our insurtech gateway acts as the ‘glue’ for assembling fully touchless, next-gen customer experiences in the cloud that leverage best-in-class solutions from global insurtechs. If you would like to test any of the solutions or see them working side-by-side, reach out to us at hello@claimtechnology.co.uk  or sign up for a trial account at www.claimtechnology.com.