Home Insurance in the Age of Amazon

Let’s be honest, for about 100 years it was pretty nice to be able to provide home insurance, send policyholders a bill, get their check in the mail and everyone went on about their business. But then companies like Amazon had to come along and ruin everything. Not only did they make shopping easy, they started knowing what customers wanted BEFORE CUSTOMERS KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED! Nextflix is not able to only recommend content their customers will like, they are using data driven insights to produce new content, tailored to customer desires.
Thanks to the predictive capabilities of such tech giants, insurance customers are increasingly acting less like policyholders and more like empowered consumers with expectations of experiences that help them navigate the future as well as the present. How much time are your policyholders spending on your insurance company’s app? (Do you even have an app?) Consider this, the average U.S. user spends about 20 minutes PER DAY on Facebook. Even online banking customers interact with their financial institution an average of 17 times per month, according to Accenture.
This isn’t to say that home insurance providers are standing still. As the Roost team works with our partners, we are increasingly seeing innovation teams, customer labs, data scientists, and customer centric design capabilities becoming part of the fabric of the modern insurer. However, the critical input required to delight insurance customers is no different for home insurance than it is for Amazon, Netfilx or Facebook: the ability to analyze lots and lots of data.

The Time is Now: The Home Telematics Program

In light of the evolving backdrop of customer expectations, we are proud to announce the first ever Home Telematics Program for home insurance providers. At Roost, we believe home telematics has the power to transform homeowner insurance. By applying IoT technology to in-home solutions that are simple, affordable, and notification-focused, insurers can reduce home perils, save on claims, and perhaps most importantly, delight policyholders in new and engaging ways.
The Home Telematics Program is designed to jumpstart the data collection that is required to validate our belief that home telematics can usher in the “Amazon experience” of the insurance world, a shift from reactive to preventative. The ability to prevent small perils from becoming big ones. The ability to help homeowners feel safe, even when they are away from their home. A reason to engage with their insurer on a regular basis.

Join the Home Telematics Mission

Roost is looking for 5-10 innovative home insurance partners who would like to join us as part of the Home Telematics Program. The program’s goal is a large-scale, rapid deployment of home telematics devices that provide actuarially significantly findings on the mitigation of water and fire perils. The program will also measure impact on customer engagement and establish best practices for home telematics deployment to policyholders.
We have partnered with Willis Towers Watson to ensure credible and third-party analysis using policy and claims data from all the members as well as Roost’s telematics data. Program members will receive exclusive early access to results from the program.

The Home Telematics Program Details:

• Limited to 10 P&C Insurance Partners in the US
• Each program member will receive 7,000 Roost Home Protection Kits (5000 one water leak and one 9V smart-battery kit and 2000 two water leak detectors and one 9V smart-battery kit) for deployment to qualifying policy holders
• Findings will include anonymous data from up to 70,000 households with Roost devices as well as a control group of up to 70,000 households without telematic devices
• The program is a fast and highly cost effective way to validate the value of Home Telematics
• More information can be found in our Press Release: Willis Towers Watson & Roost

If you are a forward leaning insurance company, interested in learning more about the program and the process of becoming a member, please contact us by emailing Jim Strickland at strickland@roostlabs.com. We are moving quickly and as mentioned above, membership will be capped at 10 US insurance partners.