Israeli startup GeoX has signed a major commercial agreement for Japanese insurance giant Sompo to use its technology to improve risk assessment and underwriting accuracy in property insurance.
GeoX has developed technology based on artificial intelligence (AI) for analyzing 3D aerial images for assessing real estate assets automatically, and with high accuracy. This technology is expected to greatly contribute to the property insurance sector because it produces lots of information, 3D and rich with relevant data of private and commercial buildings, such as the size of the building’s roof, the type of roof, its condition, its slope and more.
GeoX’s customers include reinsurance company MunichRe, World Bank, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), leading insurance firms, and states and cities within the US, Europe and Australia.
Among other things, GeoX’s technology is designed to assist Sompo in making the underwriting process more efficient for damage to property caused by natural disasters, which for the most part is a result of the drastic climate change, and have become more frequent in the past decade, including in Japan itself.
The accurate assessment provided by GeoX’s technology will allow Sompo to automatically offer all property owners a unique premium that reflects the appropriate degree of risk. Sompo estimates that through GeoX’s platform, there will be millions of dollars in operational savings annually as well as savings in the cost of claims.
The collaboration between GeoX and Sompo has been led by Sompo’s innovation center in Tel Aviv, which is responsible for investments and collaborations with Israeli companies in the fields of transport, fintech, agritech, cybersecurity, and digital health.
GEOX was founded in 2018 by Izik Lavy (CEO), Eli Lavy (CTO), and Guy Attar (CBDO). The company’s investors include huge investment company ICM and the Sure-Tech R&D Partnership.
Sompo Israel Digital Lab head Yinnon Dolev said, "We are delighted at the start of the partnership with GeoX and believe that with the company’s technology we can make the underwriting and risk assessment process, which we conduct for those insured, much more accurate."
GeoX cofounder and CEO Izik Lavy said, "Conducting risk assessment for buildings will allow Sompo to reflect in a fair way the level of risk for those insured. Our technology saves Sompo the need to send surveys to each house during the underwriting process at high cost and even to provide an accurate price assessment automatically to customers, who ultimately benefit from fast service with an accurate cost estimate. Not only that, we allow the supervision of assets that are already insured and the possibility of examining if there has been a decline in maintenance of the building, which would mean a rise in the risk."
Sompo, the second largest insurance company in Japan, operates in more than 30 countries and has annual revenue of $36 billion. In 2018, the digital lab was founded in Tel Aviv, led by Yinnon Dolev, which has since launched several commercial collaborations with Israeli tech companies and venture capital investments.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 15, 2022.
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