Do-it-yourself checks for motor vehicle insurance on rise amid covid disruption

The Indian motor insurance marketplace has made a shift towards remote do-it-yourself (DiY) checks and inspections as a service owing to covid-19, which necessitated moving away from physical vehicle inspections.

During the lockdown, insurtech firm WIMWIsure, according to a statement, " conducted more than 200,000 virtual inspections for passenger and commercial vehicles through its on-demand Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled video inspection platform in Financial Year 2020-21".

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The company saw the bulk of its more than 350,000 inspections to date during the lockdown, with strong demand from tier-II and tier-III cities for mid-range SUVs, sedans and hatchbacks. Interestingly, cars in the luxury segment, which are typically chauffer-driven, also witnessed a surge in demand for self-service technology, indicating remote video inspections becoming popular across all categories of vehicle owners, the release said.

In the commercial segment, demand was seen from insurance providers to support front line covid workers—for trucks delivering essentials in particular.

Ravinder Kumar, founder and chief executive officer, WIMWIsure, said, “The pandemic has accelerated the shift from everything manual, laborious, and time-consuming to real-time, DIY, and quick methods, especially in the insurance industry, which is otherwise a process- and paper-intensive sector. We are already witnessing a rise in demand for self-inspection services as covid continues to affect movement of people even in 2021.”

The technology stack automates inspection of insurable assets in real time using photos and videos submitted by policy buyers. Over 2.5 million photos and videos have been uploaded on the platform for motor inspection in 2020-21, according to the press release.

The enterprise tech is disrupting the asset insurance industry with API-enabled inspection-as-a-service to evaluate risk and losses using automation and Machine Learning (ML) and provide instant validation of information from vehicle inspections, repairs, vehicle databases and claim settlements.

Insurtech streamlines the entire value chain by eliminating manual customer onboarding, sales, physical risk inspection/surveys and underwriting decisions.