A trustworthy photo at underwriting can make all the difference at claim

When sitting around a conference table or having a few beverages after work, how many times have you heard Claims and SIU reps say: “If we only knew what we insured”?

If so, you have likely encountered stories like these:

• “The car had dents all over but the owner claimed it was in pristine condition before the accident”
• “It would’ve been nice to know the insured tried to sell the vehicle the last two months. What a lucky day, it’s insured for two days and it’s stolen, so I guess we’re buying the car”
• “The photo the customer sent in to document the vehicle was parked at his house in Kansas with palm trees in the background”
• “How could such a large dent come from such a minor impact”

These are just a few examples of the types of issues that claim reps and SIU encounter. They may spend countless hours investigating losses where things just don’t add up. Many times everything checks out but the claims investigative process has to slow down to verify the facts of the loss. Unfortunately, at other times the evidence doesn’t make sense which leads to an additional time-consuming investigation.

Our friends in the property insurance arena have similar stories. “How do I know the photo of the 5-carat diamond ring is actually the ring that was stolen?”

The claims world would love to have clear photo documentation of the insured property at the time of policy application. Historically this has been very difficult and expensive. For many there’s no easy way to ingest photos into the policy system; and even if such a mechanism existed, how is the rep to confirm the photos reflect the actual property insured? Sending out a vendor to perform an inspection is a possibility, however, it’s expensive and adds delays to the binding process.

So that leaves claims reps and SIU to validate that the property existed, and if it did, its true condition and location, as close to the report of the claim as possible. As carriers increasingly accept photos in lieu of field inspections, they, unfortunately, leave themselves vulnerable to manipulated or recycled photos.

The reality is that having trustworthy photographic proof of the insured item can radically streamline so many of these processes, throughout the lifecycle of a policy, from underwriting to claims. But given that digital photos are inherently not trustworthy, how can this be achieved?

Here’s where Truepic comes into the picture (pun intended). They can resolve all the scenarios I mentioned, and more! As I stated, it would be great to have trustworthy proof at policy application, and Truepic makes it possible.

Truepic has developed a platform called Truepic Vision, which is an easy way to conduct a virtual inspection that has the same level of trust as an in-person inspection. And when I say “easy”, I mean easy for both the carrier and for the customer — initiating an inspection and reviewing results is a cinch for the carrier. And for the customer, it starts with a text message to their phone, which launches a camera app that looks like the one they use every day. But there’s an important twist.

While a normal digital photo can be easily manipulated, the photos collected using Truepic Vision are individually verified as trustworthy, authentic originals, with verified location, date, and time. Vision can even catch fraudsters who attempt to trick the system by taking a picture of an existing photo on a computer screen.

The result is that you can conduct a trusted virtual inspection without the high cost and time sink of having to send out a third party to conduct an inspection in person. With that, Truepic Vision lets you collect trusted photos of the insured item when you bind the policy, to ensure its existence, location, and condition, and supplement that with trusted photos of the same item at the time of a claim. Vision can deter fraudsters at every step in the life of a policy while speeding things up for genuine customers. The result is fewer losses through fraud, lower costs to process policies, and happier customers.

Now, who wouldn’t want that?