Claims Business: Davies, EarthDefine, LexisNexis and AqualisBraemar

Davies, an international financial services firm based in London, is continuing its expansion into the US with the purchase of Johnson Claim Service Inc. in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Davies said Johnson Claim Service will continue to offer end-to-end claims and third-party administration services predominately to London Market brokers and Lloyd’s of London syndicates.

The addition of Johnson Claim Service adds specialist transportation claims capability to its United States operations. The acquisition marks Davies’ sixth purchase this year, and its second in the US.

In July, the company announced that executive Matt Button was relocating from London to head up its US Claims Unit in Nashville. That followed the purchase last year of claims adjusting shops Frontier and ASC.

In September Davies announced its acquisition of TriPlus, a Boston-area company that offers claims and policy administration management services to long-term care insurers.

“Growing our claims solutions platform in the US is a central part of our strategy for growth,” Davies Group Chief Executive Officer Dan Saulter said in a press release. “We will continue to add complementary TPA, adjusting and supply chain services both organically and through additional acquisitions.”

In Tulsa, Johnson President Allen Johnson will continue on with the company in a claims management consultant role and Chief Operating Officer Bryan Johnson will continue to lead the day-to-day operations of the business. All 40 Johnson employees will continue in their roles as Davies employees.

Davies employs 4,000 people in offices in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Bermuda, the US and Canada.

EarthDefine, a Redmond, Wash.-based tech company, has released a database that shows the building footprints of 156 million commercial and residential structures in the United States.

The company said its data, which is available on demand, depicts with “rooftop accuracy” where structures fall within a parcel of land to improve risk rating, quoting accuracy, and claims response.

EarthDefine said the building footprints are generated using neural networks, a type of artificial intelligence algorithm provides accurate extraction of ground features such as building footprints, parking lots, trees, swimming pools and solar panels from aerial imagery and LIDAR data. The approach has a 98% accuracy rate, the company said.

EarthDefine said geocoding solutions “have evolved from zip code based centroids to street interpolated geocoding and, most recently, parcel-level geocoding.”

“While these forms of geocoding may generate useful insights, they are also flawed because they are based upon assumptions on where properties are located on a map,” the company said in a press release. “For example, with parcel-level geocoding, addresses are always mapped to the center of a parcel. This poses a problem because parcels often vary in size, so if a policy is located in the upper northeast corner or lower southwest corner, then a carrier will be basing their wildfire, flood, hurricane, hail, etc., determinations on the wrong location.”

“Stacking errors” can impact hundreds of even thousands of addresses in a book of business, leading insurers to suffer higher losses than anticipated, the company said.

“In order for insurers to truly understand the impact of wildfires and other severe weather events, they need to be able to take an address and pinpoint its exact location on a map,” stated Vikalpa Jetly, founder and chief executive officer of EarthDefine. “Once a policy’s location has been correctly geocoded, then insurers can begin their location analysis.”

LexisNexis Risk Solutions has formed a partnership with data analytics provider Arturo to offer property insurers analyses that combine data about weather events and auto and property claims to existing imagery in order to more accurately access the condition of a roof for underwriting purposes.

Imagery alone does not necessarily capture the full scope of issues that may impact the condition of the roof, LexisNexis said in a press release. Having advanced imagery analytics with weather, auto and property claims data can provide a more complete picture, the company said. Auto claims, which typically occur immediately after a hailstorm, provide leading indicators of area roof damage and combined with property claims can create a geospatial view of roof damage that is not always captured in imagery.

“With the continued increases in roof-related claims severity, our innovations will address a critical need in the industry,” stated George Hosfield, senior director and general manager of home insurance for LexisNexis.

Arturo, based in Chicago, is an analytics company developed through an investment by American Family Insurance. LexisNexis Risk Solutions is an Atlanta-based subsidiary of LexisNexis, a legal research and publishing company.

AqualisBraemar and entered into a cooperation agreement with Middle East Loss Adjusting Co. Ltd. that will strengthen MEA’s claims services to the local insurance market in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Middle East International Loss Adjusting Co. Ltd. is licensed by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA), the company said. The cooperation agreement allows the company to access AqualisBraemar’s specialist engineering services, particularly with regard to the energy, power and maritime industries, the company said in a press release.

AqualisBraemar, based in Oslo, Norway, is an engineering, marine and adjusting consulting firm to the renewables, maritime, oil and gas and power and utilities industries. Key services include loss adjusting, expert witness, dispute resolution and risk assessment.