
(Image credit: Myriams-Fotos.)
Orchid Insurance Partners (Vero Beach, Fla.) has adopted Betterview’s remote property intelligence platform to enhance its catastrophe-exposed property underwriting, according to a joint announcement.
Orchid Insurance will leverage Betterview’s technology to build on its underwriting capabilities for commercial properties to enable quick quoting and binding issuance for coverage solutions including Business Owner Policies, Monoline Property Policies, Wind-Only, Lessor’s Risk, Mobile Home/RV Communities and more, according to Bryan Schofield, SVP, head of commercial lines, Orchid Insurance. Through Betterview’s technology, Orchid also will be able to update its reinsurance, underwriting, and aggregation models more frequently.
“When we started down the path of digitizing, we realized that a platform that offered high-quality aerial imagery and analytics was critical to the accuracy and speed of our underwriting processes,”comments Schofield. “Betterview’s platform offers superior imagery and an intuitive interface, allowing us to provide more accurate—and transparent—quotes for new and renewal business.”
An early adopter of data-driven underwriting, Orchid’s Commercial Lines division has a history of teaming with InsureTech companies, such as Betterview, to deliver best-in-class underwriting results to its partner carriers, according to Schofield.
“Technology has the potential to change our industry in a meaningful way,” comments Tommy Ellis, a Commercial Lines underwriter at Orchid. “With Betterview’s platform, we simply type in the address for the property risk we intend to analyze, and, within seconds, we have high-resolution imagery and data analytics on that property. If the imagery and data show no problems, we can be flexible with deductibles and pricing. If the property has issues—roof staining or ponding, for example—the system flags those risks, allowing us to be proactive in underwriting and transparent with customers.”
Schofield says that Orchid is in the process of integrating directly with Betterview, which will allow data to be received seamlessly as part of the normal workflow and eliminate the need for inputting an address.
Mitigating Risk and Avoiding Losses
Betterview’s scalable technology platform offers insurers improved data, visualization, and interpretation for better property risk management, according to David Tobias, the company’s co-founder and COO. “We help partners like Orchid move from traditional methods of ‘repair and replace’ to ‘predict and prevent’ to help mitigate risk and avoid losses,” says Tobias. “Betterview was created with deep, firsthand knowledge of the challenge and expense in obtaining property intelligence. With better data and software, Betterview customers can provide more accurate coverage, superior risk management and an enhanced experience to their customers.”