Acend & Liberty Mutual Take Flight With Launch of DroneInsurance.com
Liberty Mutual Specialty Markets and insurtech start-up Acend have joined forces. The insurer and insurtech startup (both Boston-based) have announced the launch of DroneInsurance.com, a the first of its kind “pay-as-you-go” platform which will provide insurance options for commercial drone operators. Check out the website here:
“Insurance is complicated for drone operators. Insurance providers rely on historical manned aviation methods to evaluate drone risk. This approach has proven difficult to adapt to the dynamic way drone enterprise works, and places many operators with rigid, complex, and expensive policies,” said Jason Griswold Co-Founder and COO of Acend. “The collaboration with Liberty Specialty Markets empowers us to collectively design innovative drone insurance products as well as have our policies backed by one of the world’s most trusted insurance brands.”
For its part, Mike Gosslin, Liberty Mutual Specialty Market’s Chief Underwriting Officer, Specialty said partnering with a company like Acend would allow his company to quickly and efficiently meet the growing needs for drone insurance.
“At Liberty Specialty Markets, we are always looking to provide risk solutions to our policy holders in new and innovative ways. The rise of drone usage by our customers is expanding rapidly and partnering with Acend makes perfect sense to meet this increasing demand. Here we have a chance to match Acend’s market leading technology with innovative insurance products and collectively create a best-in-class solution for the drone market.”
Key Components of the new platform include the following:
- Platform provides coverage for all drone types, sensors and equipment.
- Baseline policies for drone assets on the ground start at an affordable cost.
- Flight coverage may be purchased on-demand to suit the customer’s enterprise requirements. Whether customers require flight coverage for one day or for one year, the on-demand insurance platform provides users the control to dial up or down the policy coverages they need, when they need it.
- Includes a “Flight Saver” intelligent system that automatically looks for and applies discounts to customers who employ risk reduction techniques such as continuous pilot training, implementation of safety management and operation of more reliable equipment.
- A fast and easy to use claims portal and support center.
- An easy to use document center including the ability for a client to add Additional Insureds.
- An easy to use program for brokers.
Founded in Boston in 2016, Acend is an insurtech start-up focusing building an insurance and risk platform for an autonomous and dynamic world. Backed by entrepreneurs with a strong history of aviation, technology and finance backgrounds, the main focus of the company has been developing its pay-as-you-fly insurance platform for drones. The company’s focus on drone insurance is just one of the several products the company is focusing on that deals with the intersection of insurance and autonomous vehicles.
According to the companies, DroneInsurance.com will go live in limited release and be on display for the first time at the DroneInsurance.com booth (#440) at Xponential 2017. It will move into full release across the US in summer 2017 with additional international markets scheduled to follow.
We first mentioned Acend in our article on Why We Think Boston
Two new “Boston Success Stories” added to the mix at InsurTech Boston 3
With just about a month to go before the next Insurtech Boston event, we thought it worth mentioning that two more speakers have been added to the mix.
With these latest additions, plus from what we have heard around town, Insurtech Boston 3 is shaping up to be an interesting event, with an intriguing mix of agents, insurers, associations and of course insurtech start-ups.
Don’t have your ticket yet? Don’t delay another day – here’s the link to RSVP
Goji Rumors
We haven’t heard anything ourselves, but Coverager’s Shefi Ben-Hutta had this to say on Twitter yesterday:
We’ll keep you posted… In the meantime, if you are looking for a national newsletter on #insurtech, be sure to check out Coverager.
Lastly, in other insurtech news that has nothing to do with Massachusetts, Lemonade just announced that it has entered California. This comes on the heels of Allianz’s decision to invest in the company. Here is a snippet of the email the company sent out this morning:
and here is what the website looks like when you click on the link:
As you can see Agency Checklists is keeping a close eye on them and will let our readers know when Lemonade announces its arrival in the Commonwealth.
