Hippo Insurance hopes to boost its digital underwriting and customer service processes through a new partnership with Arturo, a deep-learning property analytics company spun out from American Family Insurance.

Hippo is a California-based InsurTech that started selling homeowners insurance policies online in 2017, asserting that customers can get a quote and purchase coverage in 60 seconds or less. Hippo pitches its policies as up to 25 percent cheaper than traditional insurers, and “smarter” than current market standards.

Arturo, based in Chicago, says it focuses on delivering highly accurate structured data observations and predictions for residential and commercial properties for use in the property/casualty insurance, reinsurance, lending, and securities markets.

Michael Gulla, Senior Director of Underwriting at Hippo, said that Hippo’s partnership with Arturo has helped bring its customer processes to a high level of efficiency.

“Hippo’s partnership with Arturo has allowed us to pre-fill very valuable property data and information directly into the customer’s application including roof material, pool presence, and more,” Gulla said in prepared remarks. “These insights streamline the client’s onboarding process, while helping us define a highly accurate initial rating and top-quality underwriting requirements.”

The partnership involves integrating Arturo’s deep-learning property analysis capabilities (which provide near-real-time physical property characteristics) with Hippo’s proprietary policy management system. Since this took place, Hippo’s quotation, underwriting, and renewals capabilities for customers has become better and more affordable, the companies said.

Specifically, the data Arturo develops from its artificial intelligence-based technology has helped Hippo to better understand the physical landscape around a home, by analyzing property photos from satellite, aerial, drone, and ground-level imagery. That detailed property information can come in in under 5 seconds, the companies said, pointing out that Hippo then uses this to deliver its underwriting quotes within the targeted time frame.

John-Isaac Clark, CEO at Arturo, said in prepared remarks that Arturo appreciates the challenges its partners are trying to address, thanks to its history of being developed and built within American Family Insurance, a long-standing carrier.

Sources: Arturo, American Family