Business News: Baron Weather, Root and Verisk, Aerie and Ventiv Technology

Verisk, a data analytics provider, announced that Root Insurance has joined the Verisk Data Exchange.

As a participating insurer, Root will gain access to driving data from consenting consumers to enhance its user-based insurance program, Verisk said in a press release. Verisk has more than 5 million active vehicles and100 billion miles of driving data collected, said Senior Vice President and General Manager Saurabh Khemka.

“The Verisk Data Exchange lets us use data from a variety of automakers to provide the deepest discounts for car insurance to the safest drivers,” said Kumi Walker, chief corporate development and strategy officer at Root.

Root, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, bills itself as is the first licensed carrier that interacts with customers entirely through smartphone technology.

Root is able to use driving data from the exchange in its own scoring model to price coverage at point of sale, Verisk said. Also starting later this year, Root will use the exchange’s discount alert product, which lets insurers offer competitive insurance rates to qualified drivers based on their driving behavior.

Ventiv Technology has teamed up with Aerie EDI Group to offer customers using its claims administration system seamless access to the Aerie Data Transformer data translation service.

Aerie Data Transformer will help Ventiv Claims clients meet state-mandated workers’ compensation electronic data interchange requirements for XML reporting. As a growing number of states require first report of injury and subsequent report of injury reporting in XML formats, Ventiv Claims customers will be able to meet those requirements with minimal disruption to their existing state-reporting workflows, the Atlanta-based company said in a press release.

Ventiv Claims already includes an embedded EDI reporting service that supports EDI in all jurisdictions where applicable, the company said. The partnership with Aerie will add a process for the conversion of flat-file-formatted data files into XML format, Ventiv said.

“Claims customers want solutions that meet each state’s unique requirements using consistent approaches and solutions,” said Ventiv Technology Vice President Stephen Thomas. “The ability to integrate Aerie Data Transformer into Ventiv Claims allows our clients to keep processing consistent, while meeting state requirements.”

Baron, a weather intelligence provider, announced the launch of the Baron Weather API for Insurance website.

Baron said the application programming interface provides weather data for advanced notification, monitoring and validation in a variety of insurance applications such as claims management, actuarial analysis, customer engagement and fraud detection.

The website update includes a renovated documentation area with improved organization and faster access, the Huntsville, Alabama tech company said. Customers can use any coding language to track current conditions, view forecast conditions, or access historical data.

Th company said its Pinpoint Alerting product allows insurers to send customers advanced custom notifications about weather or other critical information, reducing claims by alerting customers to unsafe conditions.