WebProNews » Insurance

Google Ventures Invests In Weather Insurance Start-Up

Mike Sachoff — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:36:04 +0000

Google Ventures and Khosla Ventures have invested $42 million in a weather insurance start-up founded by former Google employees, called WeathrBill.

WeatherBill’s technology platform compiles large amounts of weather data from a variety of sources, then sells insurance based on statistical analysis.

“Google Ventures’ mission is to identify and fund big ideas – and WeatherBill’s vision of helping farmers adapt to climate change aligns perfectly with that mission,” said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures.

“WeatherBill’s founders, CEO, David Friedberg, and CTO, Siraj Khaliq, are ex-Googlers, so it’s understandable that they are working on turning the big problem of climate change into a big opportunity. Google Ventures is excited to support the WeatherBill team as they take on big data challenges and create products to protect a foundational global industry: agriculture.”

In 2010 WeatherBill launched its Total Weather Insurance product, which pays customers automatically based on weather conditions, eliminating the claims process. WeatherBill said it will use the funding to expand its team of software engineers, mathematicians, climatological agronomists and product managers to build out its platform globally.

A Funny and Interesting Look Into iPhone Insurance Claims

Darren Straight — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:03:09 +0000

‘I dropped it from a hot air balloon’ and ‘my dog mistook it for his favourite toy and chewed it to bits’ are among the bizarre insurance claims made for lost and damaged iPhones over the last 12 months, it emerged yesterday.

Other unusual claims include ‘I lost it while skydiving’, ‘I dropped it in a blender’ and ‘It fell into the kettle’.

The weird and wonderful claims came to light in a study by gadget insurers www.protectyourbubble.com.

It also emerged one in five iPhone users have made an insurance claim during the past 12 months.

Most common claims include cracked screens, lost or stolen iPhones and iPhones dropped in the toilet or bath.

A spokesman for Protect your bubble said: “With so many people carrying an iPhone with them wherever they go, it’s no surprise that they are being lost or damaged in a host of unusual ways.”

“Most of us know someone who has managed to drop their iPhone in a pint of beer or down the toilet – but these bizarre claims we have uncovered must be one-offs.’’

The study also found 45 per cent of claims have been for accidental damage to iPhones.

One unlucky customer lost his iPhone after leaning over the side of a boat in Cyprus, to see it fall out of the rucksack and plop into the sea.

And one owner reckons he was happily sitting in the local pub, when a friend spilled his pint of beer all over his phone.

Another unlucky male drove sharply round a corner, to witness his beloved iPhone sliding across the dashboard and straight out of his open window.

Other iPhone insurance claims include losing the phone under the wheels of a bus after it flew out of a pocket, and a teenager being forced to hand over his phone to thugs after they threatened him with a machete.

And one coffee shop assistant was busy making an espresso for a customer, only to turn around and find he had walked off with his phone which was sitting on the side.

The spokesman for Protect your bubble added: “The amazing ways people manage to be separated from their iPhone goes to show that you never know what’s around the corner – and it pays to get your iPhone insured.’’

Other more usual claims include losing internet connection, screen freeze, pets knocking the phone off a work surface and the fact the phone doesn’t charge.

TOP 10 MOST BIZARRE IPHONE CLAIMS

I dropped it from a hot air balloon
I lost it while sky diving
It broke when my son used it as a table tennis racket
I lost it while building a sand castle for the kids
I accidentally buried it in the garden
It fell into the kettle
I dropped it in a food blender
My dog chewed it to pieces
Juice from a defrosting piece of meat leaked into it
It flew out of the car window

TOP 10 MOST COMMON IPHONE CLAIMS

Cracked screen
Stolen while texting
Couldn’t hear the other person when making a call
Leaving phone on the car roof so it falls off when driving
Pet knocked the phone off the surface
Stolen from handbag
Internet connection completely broken
iPhone doesn’t charge
Dropped in the bath / toilet
Screen freezes

Comments

Google Letting Users Post Their Health Records Online

Frank Reed — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:03:51 +0000

Before we get started I need to tell you that I will need to fight a strong bias here to write about the issue of health records online. I have some background in the use, power and neglect of medical records from my days in the insurance business. In addition, I know the impact of a misdiagnosis and / or bad information that when it comes to many different areas of life, including how much you pay or whether you can even be covered for life and health insurance. Let’s just say when it comes to privacy I am a bit skeptical in general but more so regarding the Internet and health records.

OK, on to the matter of Google Health that was introduced by Google in 2007, opened in 2008 and is receiving some new attention. You can see CNET’s coverage which has been reworked due to some confusion regarding policies. Considering Google’s close ties to the current administration one has to guess that there is no coincidence that as the president ratchets up his talk on health care reform that Google begins to promote this product. Nice touch.

The idea behind Google Health is that you can have your medical records online with Google that you can update and share with people that you assign access to your data. The most obvious application is in an emergency situation that doctors have up to date information that will help them treat a patient having more information and thus avoiding any issues that may arise with pre-existing conditions and medications.

Sameer Samat, director of product management at Google, explained his personal impetus behind the new feature in a company blog post on Wednesday:

Just a few years ago, my father suffered a minor heart attack and was sent to the ER. I arrived on the scene in a panic, and was asked what medications he was taking. To my surprise, I had no clue. If my father had a Google Health account, and had shared his profile with me, I would have been up-to-date on his current medications.

The obvious question is about security. In a nutshell, you allow a person to have access to this data via an assigned e-mail address. That information cannot be forwarded to another party. These people can only see the information and not edit it as well. A record will be kept as to who saw the data also.

The big questions and concerns will be around security as they should be. I suspect that Google has taken every measure to lock this down. Something to consider though is that Google and this system is NOT regulated under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA. Also, there will be Google employees that will have access to this data.

So when it comes to health information when do you hit the ‘too much information’ threshold? When do you put your information in another area that could possibly be compromised? What would happen in an emergency if this information could not be found as was the case with Mr. Samat? This begs a lot questions and it will certainly be an individual choice to get involved. What’s your take?

Comments

29 Fortune 100 Companies Have Negative Google Results

Andy Beal — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 16:27:09 +0000

I thought we’d find some gems by keeping an eye on the blogs of our readers, and 97th Floor proves us right.

They reviewed Google search results for the companies that make up the Fortune 100 list and found that 29 of them have search listings that could hurt their brand.

While it’s not a shock to see Walmart, Exxon Mobile and Dell on the list, others are surprising, such as:

5.) State Farm Insurance – Two Sites one is “Consumer Affairs” has consumer complaints about the company. The other is “Law Cornell .edu” it is information about a major Law Suit.

19.) Duke Energy – One site “Duke Energy Employee Advocate” which is very negative about how the employees are lied to and treated poorly.

26.) Coca-Cola – One site “Killer Coke” this is taken from the site, “We need your help to stop a gruesome cycle of murders, kidnappings and torture of SINALTRAINAL (National Union of Food Industry Workers) union leaders and organizers involved in daily life-and-death struggles at Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia.”

Ok, I may be gone a while, I have 29 new prospective clients that need to hear about reputation management.

Comments

Insurance Co: Blogs Are A Liability

Mike Sachoff — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 14:55:21 +0000

An insurance carrier told a New Jersey law firm that they could not cover the firm’s Web site if they had a blog. The insurance company Chubb saw the blog as a liability and fretted that the content could be viewed as legal advice.

Lawyer and blogger Dennis Kennedy gave his perspective on the controversy," My rule of thumb on these issues is to simply substitute the word "telephone" for "blog" and then see if there is any new issue raised by blogs that aren’t raised by telephones. I haven’t found any yet – in twelve years off thinking about these issues since I first started my website."

Lawyer Kevin O’Keefe sees the behavior as typical of the insurance industry. On his blog he writes," Exclude coverage for anything you can get away with and talk of high risks that aren’t real so as to increase premiums and/or to sell new types of coverage."

The insurance company does not seem familiar with the definition of blogging. Blogger Bill Gratsch wrote" The idea that a law firm’s weblog is somehow completely different from its e-newsletter or its company website shows a lack of understanding of web technology."

The questions that remain: are the insurance company just doing its job and being overly cautious; or are they truly confused by the concept of blogging? Gratsch sums it up writing," We obviously don’t know the full story behind the insurance company’s rationale and perhaps it is simply taking a cautious approach to give itself time to understand weblogs and complete risk assessments, etcetera. For that I cannot blame them. They are running a business, after all. "

The Analytics Opportunity

James Taylor — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 21:19:51 +0000

Final interesting article in DM Review this month – Dealing with Data: Data Analytics: A Huge Opportunity by Shari Rogalski. She does a nice job of summarizing the research and makes some good points. A couple of things I wanted to highlight:

* You must move to a predictive mindset, not an analyze-the-past mindset. Check out my predictive analytics FAQ if you are not sure what this means

* You must act first, not just know first, if your data is going to give you a competitive edge

* Retail may be a growth area but financial services and insurance, among others, have been doing this a while in risk-centric decisions

* You need to focus on the decisions you are trying to improve, not just on the data

* One of the great benefits of this approach is that front-line staff, and self-service systems, get the benefit of analytical insight without having to look at reports themselves – a change in mindset

I just reviewed Tom Davenport’s great new book, Competing on Analytics, and if you like the article you should probably pre-order it here. I also mentioned another accenture study in a long post promoted by a TDWI survey on Predictive Analytics – that post has all the links you could need or want to explore the topic so I will leave it there.

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VP of Product Marketing with a passion for the technologies of decision automation. 15 years designing, developing, releasing and marketing advanced enterprise software platforms and development tools. Across the board experience in software development, engineering and product management and product marketing.

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iPods, Your Identity, Get Digital Insurance

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 20:08:18 +0000

Homeowners’, flood, car, health, unemployment, and now iPod insurance? How would like to add identity theft insurance to your plan? With the digital age now comes digital insurance.

As The Independent’s Isabelle Kassam points out, CDs and other digital media storage could be claimed on insurance policies, but until recently there was no allowance for recouping the costs of lost digital downloads.

Nationwide is the first insurance company in the US to recognize digital media downloads as family jewels and offer coverage on them. The insurance covers games, ringtones, movies, music, or anything of value that could be stored on an electronic device.

Louisiana State University invoked Equifax to provide students and faculty with identity-theft insurance. This was shortly after AOL’s revelation that their paid subscription also came with identity-theft insurance and computer damage insurance.

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Disney to Provide ‘iPod’ Content Insurance

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:02:38 +0000

A disaster befalling an iPod usually means having to repurchase content, but a plan from major content provider Disney will cover those lost songs and videos.

The Macsimum News website reported on a forthcoming insurance plan to be offered by the Walt Disney Company to cover the replacement of media contained on an iPod that gets damaged, stolen, or lost.

The site described some of the features of the plan, which they claim come from a “credible source” they plan to reveal this week:

The insurance program provides for either replacement of lost or damaged media, a monetary payment or both.

If the user experiences a computer system crash, drive crash, or suffers from damaged or corrupted files, insurance, previously paid for by the user, would replace or otherwise compensate for the previously downloaded file. The plan would also cover a lost or stolen iPod.

Along with the various features of the insurance plan Disney should make available this week, and briefly touching on the technology solution to manage claims made for coverage, Macsimum covered the human factor: people being assaulted or even killed over their iPods.

Insurance for digital devices like the iPod could be a compelling purchase for family members buying an iPod as a gift. Removing the financial penalty for replacing an iPod and its content looks like a sensible idea.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.

Business Insurance for the Small Business

Gannon Pierpont — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 20:23:54 +0000

If you’re still in the planning stages of starting a new business, you’ve probably enumerated all your expenses and laid out all your needs in a business plan. In the excitement of actually getting your business up and running, it’s too easy to plan for the best and forget to prepare for the worst. A little insurance can go a long way to help your business over crises and rough spots.

At a bare minimum, the Small Business Administration recommends that your business carry at least the following types of insurance:

Most Important Of All: Property Insurance Property insurance is like homeowners’ insurance for your business. It will insure the physical assets of your business against loss in the event of catastrophic events like fire. The SBA recommends that you check your policy carefully to be certain that the most likely events that will cause damage are covered. In many states, for instance, it’s common to exclude floods from standard property insurance. You’ll need a specific rider to cover that.

If your business owns vehicles, or uses a vehicle for transporting or delivering goods or services, you also should have business auto insurance. If you use a personal vehicle (or employ others who do) that vehicle should be covered under a business rider in addition to the regular auto insurance that is required by your state. If it is involved in an accident while being used for business purposes, your personal auto insurance coverage may not cover the damages.

Special Coverage for Equipment or Liabilities If your business depends on specialized equipment, including computers, you should insure them under separate coverage. In many cases, your property insurance for the business will only have limited coverage for technical equipment.

Insure Against Financial Loss Business income insurance will reimburse you if an unexpected catastrophe like a fire causes you to close your doors temporarily. Based on estimated earnings for that period, it can help you pay your bills and expenses even while you are unable to do business normally. If your business is a seasonal one, you might consider peak season coverage in case a fire or accident causes you to close your doors during your busiest time of the year.

Many insurance companies offer package policies for small business owners that combine all needed insurance under one umbrella – a Business Owners’ Policy. Usually, the premium on a business owners’ policy will be substantially less than you’d pay if you purchased each coverage separately. Your insurance agent can help you tailor a plan that takes all your business needs into account. He can even add specialty coverage to a standard umbrella policy at a discount if you combine everything into one plan.

Besides insurance that protects your company and its assets in case of damage, most states also require that you carry workers’ compensation coverage if you employ others on your premises, or to carry out tasks for your business as an employee. Again, an insurance agent can help you decide whether you need to carry workers’ compensation for your employees, but in general, unless those that work for you are specifically employed as independent contractors or consultants, they are considered your employees and you are responsible for providing coverage for them.

You should also check your state’s laws regarding health insurance, not only for your workers but for yourself. Each state has different laws regulating what insurance must be provided for what size business, but in some states, it works to your benefit if you are a self employed owner of a business with one employee – yourself. In Maine and several other states, certain insurance plans must be offered to you at group rates even if you are the ONLY employee of your business.

If your business has unique needs, you should consult an insurance agent who is experienced in writing policies for other businesses that share your field. Businesses such as barber shops, restaurants and professional offices all have unique needs that require specialized knowledge of the protections that might be required in that field.

Gannon Pierpont is the staff writer of
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Humana and Virgin Team Up on Insurance

Chris Crum — Sat, 07 May 2005 17:12:24 +0000

Health benefit company Humana and Virgin announced that they have formed a business alliance.

The project is described as the development of a Virgin-branded and Humana-administered individual health insurance product tied to Virgin’s health and fitness reward program.

Humana will be an initial business partner for a new, U.S.-based Virgin company, Virgin life care.

“From music to airlines to mobile telephony, Virgin gives customers the power to choose and use innovative products that they really want. Humana has done the same in health benefits,” said Humana President and CEO Michael B. McCallister. “Virgin life care will create products and services for health care consumers that are liberating, life-enhancing and fun. We at Humana are delighted to be part of this exciting new development.”

Virgin Chairman Sir Richard Branson said, “With the development of our new company, Virgin life care, we believe that we can offer consumers great innovative products and services, at the right prices. Virgin life care will help our customers get a better deal from health insurers while monitoring and improving their own fitness. With this healthcare alliance with Humana, we’ll give customers the value they’ve been asking for.”

The new insurance product is scheduled to launch early next year.

Chris is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.