If someone has suffered a personal injury, chances are good there's video footage of the event. CCTV in stores and bars, dashboard cams, smartphones, and even doorbell cameras are capturing valuable evidence that can clarify fault, streamline claims and reduce fraud.
For insurance companies and policyholders, this can be a good thing. There's nothing like quality, recorded video to shine truth on a situation, especially when it's time to file and process a claim.
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Plus, customer expectations have evolved. Policyholders now demand faster, more efficient service. Digital video can boost customer satisfaction by expediting claims processing and reducing disputes. Many insurers have introduced mobile apps that enable customers to submit video evidence of damages, eliminating the need for lengthy paperwork and in-person assessments.
The hidden risks of video in insurance
The explosion of digital video means insurers now handle more personally identifiable information (PII) than ever before. Every frame of footage can contain sensitive details about policyholders, claimants, and even uninvolved bystanders – faces, license plates, addresses, and other private data that, if mismanaged, can lead to privacy violations, compliance failures and lawsuits.
In the case of that personal injury scenario, there's certainly video that captures the accident. But the same video also includes images of people, places and information that are totally unrelated – and could be sensitive.
However, innovative AI-powered redaction solutions can help insurers maintain privacy and follow data privacy laws, such as:
● Europe's GDPR mandates strict controls on personal data, including video imagery.
● Canada's PIPEDA enforces similar privacy requirements.
● The U.S. is rapidly catching up, with state-level laws like the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) and the TDPSA (Texas Data Privacy and Security Act) imposing heavy fines for non-compliance.
Insurers also face an operational challenge: Sorting through vast amounts of video to determine what's relevant to a claim and what must be protected is time-consuming and inefficient. An automated solution can help insurers speed up claims processing – enhancing business performance and increasing customer satisfaction.
Protecting video data
It's not just claim processing that benefits from using video. Fraud detection, risk assessment, remote inspections, and training are all enhanced by using video. For example, video-based risk assessment can identify structural weaknesses, fire hazards or safety violations, allowing insurers to tailor coverage and pricing accordingly.
But all that video – some of it from public sources, some of it generated in the field – represents data. Increasingly, legislators around the world are regulating how companies must handle data.
In all these cases, regulations require organizations to safeguard personal information in the data they collect. When it comes to insurers and video, that includes personally identifiable imagery and information about policyholders and claimants, as well as bystanders who happen to appear in the collected video. But in all that video, how do companies protect what needs protecting?
How insurance depends on privacy-first video processing
The solution is to rapidly anonymize video data; to digitally redact the personally identifiable information of bystanders before using the video for claims or processes, and certainly before sharing the video with other parties.
Video redaction is important to protect privacy and comply with regulations, but it's also necessary, for example, to minimize liability. Unredacted video that inadvertently exposes personal details could lead to lawsuits, regulatory penalties and eroded policyholder confidence.
It also helps protect confidential business information, such as in footage that may include details about security systems, company assets or private conversations. It can be used to avoid bias in claims processing by redacting subjective factors that could influence decision-making. Video redaction can, in cases where claim-related video becomes part of legal proceedings or public records, prevent the exposure of harmful private information.
Automated selective redaction is the only scalable solution
Meanwhile, relying on manual video review is impractical, negating the very benefits that video is meant to provide. Security professionals or video specialists must comb through video feeds and use digital anonymization tools to "blur" or otherwise block out faces, license plate numbers, visible computer screens, and any other personally identifiable information that is not relevant to a claim or its parties.
That's why more and more, insurers are adopting video redaction as an enterprise software platform, to speed up time-to-claim processes. The most effective enterprise redaction technology capitalizes on advances in artificial intelligence to quickly and automatically identify PII elements of a video, such as faces, license plates, computer screens, and more, then blur personal and sensitive data in both recorded and live videos feeds.
A platform like Secure Redact, which can automatically anonymize personally identifiable information in a video feed, even comes with enterprise APIs so that the privacy platform can integrate with claims management and other systems.
This capability helps insurers boost productivity, support privacy initiatives, and comply with regulations. By streamlining claims processing, companies can quickly realize a positive ROI.
As technology evolves, insurance companies that leverage digital video can gain a competitive edge, ensuring better service for policyholders and greater operational efficiency. But it's not enough just to use video effectively; insurance companies must protect the privacy of those in the frame. Enterprise-level redaction software is up to the challenge.
