SOMPO operates in more than 30 countries and has annual revenue of $36 billion. By installing GEOX’s technology, they will be able to improve the accuracy of their risk assessments and underwriting processes. The collaboration between SOMPO, the second-largest insurance company in Japan, and GEOX was led by SOMPO’s innovation center in Tel Aviv, founded in 2018, which is responsible for investments and collaborations with Israeli companies in the fields of transport, fintech, agritech, cybersecurity, and digital health.
Property damage and climate change
Climate change can lead to severe property damage. Any sort of natural disaster, be it flooding, hurricanes, or even extreme heatwaves can badly harm all sorts of properties. The amount of such natural disasters has increased by five-fold over the past 40 years and has had an economic cost of $3.64 trillion. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like these catastrophes are going to subside- if anything, they're going to become harsher, and happen more frequently. These kinds of incidents are very expensive for insurance companies; in 2020 alone, insurance companies had to pay out $100 billion because of climate change-related damages. This is a 40% increase from the average over the past 100 years. What’s more is that the COVID-19 pandemic, and its mandatory social distancing mandates, has forced insurance companies to use drones or pictures taken by customers to do their assessments, which is far more complex and less efficient and reliable than doing the appraisals themselves.
GEOX has the solution to all these insurance problems. GEOX has developed a patented technology based on AI to analyze 3D aerial images of buildings and automatically assess their real estate assets and insurance risks, with great accuracy. GEOX provides lots of relevant data, be it the size of the building’s roof, the type of roof, its condition, its slope, and more, which can contribute greatly to the property insurance sector. The technology is designed to assist customers in making the underwriting process more efficient for damage to property caused by natural disasters. And so, by using GEOX, insurance companies (including SOMPO) can automatically offer property owners a unique premium that reflects the appropriate degree of risk. SOMPO estimates that through GEOX’s platform, they will save millions of dollars in annual operational costs as well as savings in the cost of claims.
“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, but we also 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.” – GEOX co-founder and CEO Izik Lavy
GEOX was founded in 2018 by Izik Lavy (CEO), Eli Lavy (CTO), and Guy Attar (CBDO). The company’s investors include ICM and the Sure-Tech R&D Partnership. They have raised a total of $4 million to date. GEOX’s notable customers include MunichRe, World Bank, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), leading insurance firms, and states and cities within the U.S., Europe, and Australia.
