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FAA Allows AIG To Use Drones For Insurance Inspections
An anonymous reader writes with news that AIG is the latest insurance company given permission by the FAA to use drones for inspections. "The Federal Aviation Administration has been rather stingy when it comes to giving companies the OK to test, let alone employ, drones. After getting permission this week, AIG joins State Farm and USAA as insurance providers with exemptions that allow them to use the UAVs to perform tasks that are risky to regular folks — things like roof inspections after a major storm. In addition to keeping its inspectors safe, the company says drones will speed up the claims process, which means its customers will, in theory, get paid faster. 'UAVs can help accelerate surveys of disaster areas with high resolution images for faster claims handling, risk assessment, and payments,' the news release explains. 'They can also quickly and safely reach areas that could be dangerous or inaccessible for manual inspection, and they provide richer information about properties, structures, and claim events.'"
1) The insurance company or possibly the individual operator in case of gross negligence.
2) It is part of a claim. If denied it can be contested and this is evidence just like the adjustor walking around and saying what he was is evidence at whatever arbitration hearing.
3) The inspector is going to be there running the drone. They can go inside and look at the water stained ceiling. This is so they don't have to risk their life walking around on a potentially unstable roof. Seriously, ladders and falls kill many people every year.
This is a good thing. You call someone to look at your roof and they can use a machine to do it instead of risking their life.
1. Because if said drone falls and hits someone, who has to pay? The insurance company (who will simply pass it onto customers by raising rates) or the home owner whose house was being inspected (AIG: "The accident wouldn't have happened if John Smith didn't file a claim in the first place")?
The same can be said for an agent driving a company car or doing anything else while working on the clock. I'm not sure how a drone would be handled differently than anything else the agents of the company do.
2. Do customers have a right to view/context said drone footage? People don't exactly record everything they do in a post-disaster situation so if the insurance company claims, "we saw you with a chainsaw, how do we know you didn't do the damage yourself?" and you can't remember the what's and why's, you're screwed.
That's a legit concern. Finding new ways of denying coverage is probably a high priority to some people in the industry.
On the other hand, having more picture and video footage will legitimately help them reduce fraud.
Where will the equilibrium point end up? Hard to say. But this is a legitimate point.
3. How much information can they get with those drones? For obvious damage, yeah, drones are great. But for more subtle damage, like water damage, you NEED a human inspector there. (If the roof has enough water damage, it may not be legally habitable.)
I don't think they're planning on just flying a drone over to your house for a routine damage inspection in place of a human being. I think it's more along the line of an agent keeping a drone in the back of the car so they can fly it around and inspect your roof without having to climb up a ladder. Or perhaps fly around an area where storm/flooding damage has made the specific area unsafe (i.e. collapsed house, washed out bridge with a flooded stream, etc.).
But yeah, perhaps they will just zip a drone around and offer you a minimal payment rather than doing real inspection work. I could see some companies trying to pull that.
And reducing fraud is a bad thing.... why?
Because it's not always fraud.
There are a lot of people who really are disabled but who are periodically able to do more serious activities despite the disability, or who try to get better by doing such activities. When an insurance company or benefits arm of the government sees that, they often try to take benefits away. It creates perverse incentives to not try to get better, and it results in disabled people being hurt because they're trying to get better.
If they weren't so expensive I'd love to have one for my own use for that purpose.
DJI just announced, and will shortly be shipping v3 of their very popular Phantom platform. There are going to be a LOT of people itchy to move to that unit for one reason or another. You should be able to get hold of a gently used v2 for very little by this summer. Cheapie cheap cheap.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This is a good thing. You call someone to look at your roof and they can use a machine to do it instead of risking their life.
Not to mention: using a drone, they're using contactless observation. If an inspector damages your property while inspecting, that costs everyone. A drone shouldn't be causing property damage.
I wonder what restrictions the FAA put on these insurance companies ... like what sort of training do their pilots require?
I imagine they didn't just leave it up to the insurance company, but probably mandated a certain level of training. I know there was talk of requiring a full pilot's license, perhaps a commercial one, for such things.
I don't know if an FAA unmanned aircraft endorsement exists, or they might require a rotorcraft (helicopter) endorsement for your typical quadcopter. Not that all manned aircraft piloting skills apply directly to a model, but certainly a full scale pilot has a leg up on somebody with no experience at all.
And that said, requiring such a certification is way overkill, but it wouldn't surprise me at all.
Whatever the rules are, I'd expect the insurance companies to make sure that whomever operated these was sufficiently skilled to do so competently, either by teaching them to fly the old fashioned way or by providing aircraft that are automated enough that they don't really do much except tell it where to go.
A drone that only carries a camera can weigh a lot less than a package delivery drone, so the FAA may be a little bit less concerned about what happens if one falls on you (until someone gets seriously injured by that, at least).
Actual former insurance adjuster here - automobile property damage claims. I would think a drone would be sufficient for initial appraisals.
Here's how it works for auto claims - an appraiser makes a fairly cursory initial inspection of VISIBLE damage. They don't (usually) pop the hood, they don't (usually) lift the car up. They walk around the car wherever it is parked, note down what they see, and do an initial estimate.
Now, maybe four times out of five, when the actual repair work is done, additional damage is found. Like, the mechanic pops off the old bumper and finds some crushed pins, something like this. A supplemental appraisal is then generated - that's where you get the actual, and most likely final cost of the repair work. I've seen cases where a third supplement gets generated, but that was fairly uncommon in my experience.