As part of the AAIS Webinar Series, AAIS hosted a virtual discussion on December 7, 2023, featuring Chrp Technologies. Moderated by AAIS President & CEO Werner Kruck, the session explored the state of today’s home insurance market as well as the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. Featured guest speakers Chin Ma, President of Chrp Technologies, and Brandi Wyrick, AVP of Experience at Orion180, reviewed how new and emerging technologies like Chrp can improve underwriting results and operational efficiencies. They also touched upon the role of artificial intelligence (AI) across the insurance space and how companies can leverage new capabilities to improve the customer experience.
Overview of Orion180 & Chrp Technologies
Orion180 is a technology-based insurance company that utilizes cutting-edge technology paired with outstanding customer service to simplify the insurance experience and enhance the customer experience. They are primarily HO3 in six southeast states but are beginning to roll out other products in more states. Chrp Technologies helps home insurance companies build great relationships with their insureds through proprietary AI products that deliver loss prevention and an enhanced customer experience. Chrp has seen tremendous success with clients like Orion180.
Finding Solutions by Utilizing AI Tools
Orion180 as a company focuses on three areas: efficiency, accuracy, and customer experience. “Our challenge was timely identification of risk and issues,” Wyrick shared. “Specifically, having inspections completed, allowing us time to review them, and giving the insured time to repair anything that we found had adverse conditions. So, we really needed to streamline that process to make it more efficient.” Accuracy is also extremely important to Orion180 because they base their outcome on the data that’s provided back to them from inspections. And, overall, the inspection process is a customer experience. What attracted Orion180 to Chrp Technologies was the ease of use and that it hit all three of the company’s focal points. “From an efficiency standpoint, it's an automatic process,” said Wyrick. “You don’t have to manually order inspections, follow up, track, and keep all that data together. [The] AI built into the platform is accurate. We’ve gone from months of training time down to weeks. And if we have an issue, I know Chin and his team will be there on the customer experience side.”
Impact on Retention Rate & Policy Holder Engagement
Since partnering with Chrp, Orion180 has been able to retain its policies. “When we launched Chrp, our average date of a completed inspection returned was around 16 days,” Wyrick reported. “With all of the updates, we went from 16 days to now nine days completed and it's still dropping. We've got drastically increased policy retention because we're able to review those risks and provide those solutions and keep that policy.” Wyrick believes this process with Chrp has made policyholders more aware of their risk and its impact on insurance.
Overcoming Challenges
Being a company born out of Florida, Ma admits one of the biggest challenges for Chrp is that a lot of its customers are of an older demographic and do not feel they are tech-savvy enough to use the service. “So, one thing that we've put into place right away is a seven-day-a-week, 365 customer service model,” said Ma. “In our company, you go through a rite of passage called the legendary conversation.” This is essentially walking a customer through the inspection process and guiding them through the app. These conversations with customers influence the way that Chrp designed its application. “Those are the types of conversations and experiences that give us the opportunity to make improvements.”
Insight on How Chrp Works
Chrp complies with two mission statements: Eliminate Non-Cat Claims and Help People Have Healthy Homes. “Conducting inspections is [not] a new thing for the insurance industry,” Ma confessed. “But doing so the right way is incredibly important. Right now, the ‘right way’ also necessitates an economic model that works with an underwriting.” Being able to leverage self-inspections in concert with physical inspections, in a cost-effective way, is a huge plus in driving volume, according to Ma. Then, the correct symptoms that lead to claims need to be analyzed. “If you get those two things right, you should see a high inspection conversion, roughly between 75% to 85%, on the self-inspection side. Blended cost-wise, that can actually reduce your overall inspection cost,” he stated. Chrp delivers highly accurate AI to streamline what symptoms require underwriting action and also offer a solution to customers so they can prioritize their time. This leads to the end result, which is how to eliminate non-cat claims to ultimately improve profitability.
When the inspection report comes through to the customer, any adverse conditions that the AI has found are listed first. “We're looking at those first before we even get through the rest of the inspection,” Wyrick shared. “That's the efficiency aspect of [Chrp]; we can see right off the bat what's wrong. If it's bad enough, we’ll already know how this risk is going to end up.” But the best function of the Chrp platform in Wyrick’s opinion is the ability to escalate inspections. “If we have a reviewer that's kind of guessing at something or if they have a question, they can escalate that inspection to a new cue, and myself or another senior member can go in to look and write our notes. Then it goes right back to that inspector.”
To view the webinar in its entirety, click on the video above.
Questions? Please don't hesitate to reach out to any of the featured speakers through the contact information below.
Werner Kruck
President & CEO – AAIS
wernerk@aaisonline.com
Chin Ma
President – Chrp Technologies
cma@chrptech.com
Brandi Wyrick
AVP of Experience – Orion180