Business News: ROC-Connect, InsurTech, MedRisk

ROC-Connect Launches New Home Safety Products to Mitigate the Risk of Flood, Fire and Frost

Smart home and IoT platform provider offers Smart Home Kit and Home Safety Scorecard for mitigating risk and improving homeowner engagement

Calif.-based ROC-Connect, an Internet of Things (IoT) platform provider and creator of the smart home brand OZOM, announced the debut of new home safety products for insurers. This new offering includes a low cost smart Home Safety Kit that gives consumers an easy way to protect their homes from fire, flood and frost. Customers can use their smart phones to monitor their homes remotely, along with a new Home Safety Scorecard, designed to help them recognize risks and reduce potential losses.

The new IoT solutions will help insurance providers mitigate risk, reduce claims, improve customer engagement and generate new revenue.

The Home Safety Kit includes fire and water sensors, is fully customizable and offers the ability to add as many sensors as needed, depending on the size of the home. The sensors are monitored around the clock and link directly to emergency services, so if an alarm sounds the appropriate response is dispatched. A broad range of other smart home and IoT devices can be added to the system, including home automation.

ROC-Connect’s Home Safety Scorecard is supported by data from CoreLogic. ROC-Connect uses information from CoreLogic such as property size, location and features to analyze risk. That information is combined with data from smart home devices such as customer behavior to obtain the Home Safety Scorecard.

The Smart Home Kit and Home Safety Scorecard are both supported by the ROC-Master App, allowing insurers the ability to stay in constant communication and improve their relationships with homeowners. Insurers can tailor messaging to a homeowner of with local weather alerts and advice to help manage any known local hazards such as a bushfire or flood.

For more information on ROC-Connect, visit http://www.roc-connect.com/.

InsurTech: First Dedicated Insurance Technology Venture Capital Fund Launched

With $3 billion of investment being made last year in insurance technology and a proliferation of startups that currently number over 650, the insurance industry has been
suddenly compelled to take notice of the FinTech sub-sector known as InsurTech.
Questions on how to respond to this potential disruption have started to appear on boardroom agendas of insurance companies across the world.

The best response, according to the founders of insurance-focused venture capital firm, InsurTech Venture Partners, is to pool like-minded insurance companies in a single vehicle directed towards investing in leading InsurTech startups globally. In the fast moving world of technology, such an approach would be unique and the first structure
of its kind in the insurance industry.

Although InsurTech Venture Partners is headquartered in London, the insurance center of the world, it has a remit to seek investment in leading InsurTech startups worldwide with a focus on the main FinTech centers of Silicon Valley, New York and London.

The fund will pursue strategic integration between its portfolio investments and its insurer
investor base, with investors in the fund having an ability to leverage the products and technologies within invested startups to further their own business. An active process is in place to identify areas where invested startups can specifically enhance the client experience, product offering and revenue model of each limited partner.

For further information, visit www.insurtechventure.com

MedRisk Launches NexGen Advantage

Penn.-based MedRisk announced a new workers’ compensation cost containment service model, NexGen Advantage, at the National Workers’ Compensation & Disability Conference & Expo.

NexGen Advantage uses analytics and technology to identify and deliver the best combination of strategies to ensure accurate and fair medical payment of individual bills.

NexGen Advantage runs a payer’s bill data through a sophisticated analytic that examines a number of factors, including jurisdiction, bill type, facility, and provider type. There is a single, flat access fee. Taking each payer’s business objectives into account, the program determines where a preferred provider organization is most effective and where other cost containment strategies are best for all parties.