Hippo, CinFin partnerships: Insurtech roundup

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A worker repairs a power line in Austin, Texas, U.S., on Saturday, Feb. 20, 2021. Restaurants in Texas are throwing out expired food, grocery stores are closing early amid stock shortages and residents are struggling to find basic necessities as a cold blast continues to upend supply chains. Photographer: Thomas Ryan Allison/Bloomberg
Home insurtech Hippo has announced partherships with Claimatic and Five Sigma aimed at speeding the claims process. Claimatic’s software deals with claim reassignment issues, matching claimants and adjustors to deliver the best outcomes. The service was leveraged during the recent Texas winter storm. Five Sigma's machine-learning software can identify severity of claims early in the process, setting reserving suggestions, and reporting on reserves over time. Hippo’s VP of Claims, Darin McCarthy, says, “The importance of utilizing automation through game-changing partners like Claimatic and Five Sigma will drive scale and efficiencies, while improving on our industry-leading customer experience of Hippo.”
The Cincinnati Insurance Co. has tapped Zesty.ai's wildfire model, Z-FIRE, across its personal lines property portfolio. Z-FIRE assesses risk based on a model trained on more than 1,200 wildfire events. Scott Schuler, AVP of personal lines for the company, says “We were immediately impressed with Zesty.ai’ s ability to provide precise risk scores for individual properties at scale. Z-FIRE enhances our current wildfire risk assessment tools, increasing our teams’ confidence in writing more business for the independent agents who represent us while simultaneously giving homeowners more coverage options.”
Zurich North America has signed on with BrokerTech Ventures to be part of its mentorship platform. "We see BrokerTech Ventures as an opportunity to broaden our lens on insurtech, with the vantage point of the broker as a critical component for insurtech's ultimate success,” says Sumeet Bhatia, VP, Head of Innovation for Zurich North America. “We have been following BrokerTech Ventures since they deployed the company in 2019, and we are thrilled to move our Zurich North America relationship forward in an official capacity.”
Farmers Insurance has launched CrashAssist, a new feature included within its Signal usage-based insurance app. The new addition helps connect drivers with emergency services in the event of an accident and offers help in reporting a claim. CrashAssist delivers a push notification if a crash is detected using the same sensors already in use for the UBI program. Customers are be prompted to confirm; if there's no response within one minute, phone calls and potential emergency services are triggered. Customers can opt out of this service if they wish. "We are committed to finding innovative ways to help people be safer on the roads," said Carolyn Wald, head of innovation and integration for Farmers. "Adding crash detection to the app's capabilities helps us take the safety features a step further by recognizing a possible crash and connecting drivers to the help they need."