How are IoT technologies mitigating today's risks?

Takeaways:

• IoT provides a new way to mitigate common household risks
• It is saving carriers money
• IoT improves the customer experience

From water shutoff valves to electrical surge protectors, technology is able to mitigate a wide variety of risks, saving carriers and policyholders valuable time and money. Internet of Things (IoT) technology is also enabling insurers to be more proactive than reactive so they can prevent or at least mitigate some claims before they occur.
In a recent Leaders interview, Sarah Jacobs, senior vice president of Nationwide's Personal Lines Product and Underwriting, detailed how the company is implementing technology and discussed their smart home programs.

IoT focuses on reducing risks

IoT technology is able to mitigate a wide variety of risks, saving carriers and policy holders, valuable time and money. It also allows carriers to better educate policyholders on common household risks and how technology can identify issues before they escalate to more serious claims.

Jacobs shared, "An IoT device is simply any device that has technology embedded in it to sense and interact with its environment and connect to the internet. And really it just seems like everything is connected these days from your watch to your refrigerator. I read the other day, the estimates vary, but they think that there's 20 to 25 billion IoT devices across the world today, and that's just going to continue to expand and we'll continue to see new use cases for them."

Carriers have been using smartphone technology to collect real-time driving data from customers and now that same expertise can be used in the property insurance space.

"On the property side, the use of smart home devices has also grown exponentially in the last three to five years, and I think a lot of carriers are still fairly early in that journey of understanding how to respond," shared Jacobs. "So, there's a wide range of smart home devices as we've mentioned from doorbells to cameras and appliances, and certainly some of those have more application to insurance than others."

A recent survey by Nationwide found that 63% of homeowners have video doorbells and 55% have a smart thermostat. However, Jacobs finds it is "devices like water shutoffs and electrical fire prevention devices that are actually more beneficial in addressing some of the more common or expensive types of home disasters."

To see the rest of the interview, watch the video here.