EMC Insurance Companies is a property/casualty insurer with around 2,400 employees operating from 19 offices across the United States. In recent years, EMC has partnered with a number of innovative start-ups in the InsurTech space, with a view to better its risk improvement function.
EMC has partnered with BetterView, a company that uses aerial imagery of rooftops, taken from aircraft, to help better understanding property risks by detecting issues with the roof and to calculate a “roof score” to help underwriters with their assessment.
EMC also uses drones to provide roof assessment service reports for policyholders. More detail can be gained from HD imagery from drones than from aircraft imagery, so a more detailed roof score can be calculated. Analysing hundreds of images captured by the drones on each flight can be very laborious for the pilots, so to help with this EMC has partnered with the start-up Infralytiks, specialising in computer vision. Images are used to train a computer model to identify images automatically, and the model can then identify potential issues with the roof from the images and provide automated roof assessment reports that can be sent out to policyholders as a value-added service.
EMC has partnered with Hartford Steam Boiler (HSB) to develop sensor systems for schools. These systems monitor temperature, humidity and can detect water. They can give warning of potential problems with water damage, spoilage in refrigeration systems, pipe freeze prevention and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) failure. During the 2-year beta phase there were 33 spoilage events prevented across 54 locations, preventing more than USD 200,000 in claims.
EMC works with MobilEye to help prevent commercial auto losses. This includes coaching drivers to keep a safe distance and giving collision warnings to help prevent or mitigate rear-end collisions.
EMC has strategically invested in MakuSafe, designers of wearable safety tech. Employees wear the devices while at work, with sensors detecting temperature, humidity, air pressure, air quality, illumination, motion and physicality (amount of effort being applied). Artificial intelligence in the back end then analyses millions of data points to help identify safety concerns as well as potential production benefits. They have been in a beta test phase since late 2020, involving 1,200 devices over a 12 month no-cost trial for Workers Compensation (WC) policyholders. Employees can also record messages through the devices, which is proving useful for reporting risks, near misses or operational issues.
EMC is also working with KineticaLabs, which is an ergonomic assessment tool for WC. Video motion capture is used to identify potential WC issues with regards to workstations.
EMC is running a pilot scheme with six brewers across the country using brewery sensor solutions developed by Jenson Applied Sciences (JAS), with sensors monitoring many aspects of the brewing process and some safety aspects.
They also partner with IntelliSee, a firm that has developed a system that uses machine vision software to analyse existing video surveillance to help prevent falls and slips in the workplace. The system can detect liquids, spillages, etc and when detected will send a text alert to someone who can then address the issue. It can also detect that a person has fallen so they can receive assistance as soon as possible.
