The home insurance industry was already worth $104 billion in 2018, according to some reports, but — as with other sectors — the insurance sphere is making a concerted effort to cut inefficiencies and optimize profits through automation.
Seeking to position itself at the forefront of this push is Cape Analytics, a San Francisco-based startup founded in 2014 that is combining computer vision with geospatial imagery to help insurance companies evaluate properties as part of the underwriting process.
Up until now, Cape Analytics specialized primarily in assessing single-family homes, and it has built a database of 70 million such properties across the U.S. But the company is now expanding its service to include other commercial residence types, such as multi-family properties — covering low-rise apartment buildings of up to four storeys, condominiums, and more. The new offering is pitched as “the world’s first reliable data stream of instant accurate commercial property information.”
At its core, Cape Analytics is all about saving insurance companies from having to physically send someone out to inspect a property, which may be hazardous and is an undeniably resource-intensive process. Cape Analytics platform can detect, for example, if changes have been made to a property since a previous valuation, with visual updates pushed out to the platform at regular intervals through the year.
The company partners with third parties, such as Nearmap, which provides high-resolution aerial imagery and then extracts structured data from the visuals — including the type of roof construction (gable, hipped roof, etc), its condition, whether it has solar panels, the size of the property, and whether the property has a pool or there are trees overhanging the building.
Such property attributes are important to insurers because they are not only indicative of the current condition of the property, they are also predictive of future damage. According to Cape Analytics, the roof is a key facet of insurance underwriting because 40 percent of insurance claims are related to the roof. And the company is looking to bring additional smarts to the platform in the future.
