Google - Geoeye Insurance Solution Set

    Google will now soon be entering the market of risk management and crisis event response. With the extent of satellite imagery and the extent of geospatial expertise available with Google, this was an obvious thing coming. People, especially from the insurance industry, have long being pondering on the fact, that why Google had not moved into the the Catastrophic Risk Management avenue before. But now, the wait is over and Google is soon stepping into the Risk management domain that may bring a stir in the market dominated by companies like RMS and AIR.

    Google is teaming with GeoEye to help insurance organizations across the globe, more effectively address risk management and crisis event response.  Google’s mapping solutions, combined with GeoEye’s Earth imagery and geospatial expertise, provide a platform for enabling strategic decision making, optimization of people and assets, and powerful location-based applications across the enterprise. Insurers know that having an accurate understanding of an asset’s location and associated risks (natural disaster potential, crime, lack of fire stations, high replacement costs, etc.) is critical to evaluating risk in the underwriting process.

    Having such kind of accurate location based understanding of the risks associated with the insured locations becomes all the more important in the aftermath of a crisis event when claims get filed. It helps to have an accurate view of the affected areas over time and geography.

    Google and GeoEye have developed the solution set to address these scenarios. Google had GeoEye, together hosted a webinar just recently, where Google’s Hillary Renderman and GeoEye’s Andre Kearns described several use cases, and were joined by Google’s Chris Sierra and GeoEye’s Alistair Miller, who gave a demo of the solution set.

    The slides of the presentation are as follows:



    Some of the key points from the webinar included:

• About Google Enterprise that takes Google's most popular and innovative consumer web services and makes them ready for Businesses, Governments and Educational Institutions; aligning the way people work with the way they live.
• Geographic information is mission critical - yet most of it remains silo ed or unused." Although more than 80% of organization data has a location dimension ... this information is rarely exploited."
• Trends in Insurance:

1. More efficient asset liability management models and analysis to help improve risk management
2. Regulations on governance risk transparency and compliance
3. Expected compliance on regulatory reporting
4. Using Big Data to help estimate claims, credit, and market data
5. Increase in ability to provide access by mobile and and voice for product and service delivery
6. Analytics to help with customer insight and more efficient business processes.

• Why Google Maps & Earth for Insurance:

1. Better planning
2. Optimise People, underwriting and Assets & Facilities claims
3. Insight into policies
4. Incident Management
5. Regulatory Compliance better targeting for sales Disaster Deployment and marketing.

    Will this move from Google cause a stir in the issuance market? Will this change the face of the Risk Management Industry? Will catastrophic risk management and underwriting change for better? Would this solution set prove to be a threat to the risk management players in the industry? There are so many questions to answer, but will all of this lead to a better and a safer tomorrow?