ILC ARTICLE

Genuine benefits of artificial intelligence

12th October 2021

The decision to repair a damaged vehicle or write it off can be made within three minutes of the collision taking place by using artificial intelligence. That was the bold claim made by Tractable during a presentation at I Love Claims event ClaimsTech, which was held in London in September.

The session, entitled Disrupting Motor Claims Assessments, was presented by Marcel Horstmann, head of estimating products, and Max Ali, head of motoring, who walked attendees through a live, real-time demonstration of their technology in action.

They explained how, after reporting the incident and describing what happened to the claims handler, the driver would be sent a link to the Tractable app. The app will then ask the driver to take photographs of each corner of the vehicle to identify pre-existing damage, as well as close up images of any new damage.

Based on those images, the system can calculate the repair value and declare a total loss if it exceeds the value of the car. In this case, the Tractable app can send a settlement offer to the driver and transfer the funds to their account on the same day.

Max said, ‘The whole process can take three minutes. In normal circumstances it could take two weeks and require multiple inspections for assessors. But this way, there is no uncertainty and no delays.’

The accuracy of the AI assessments is achieved two ways. Firstly, the Tractable system is based on the input of engineers from around the world whose own experience and expertise has been embedded into the estimating process. Further, the images submitted by the driver are compared to images from an ever-growing library of hundreds of millions of accidents, with repair costs based on severity, model and type of damage.

Max said, ‘The systems learns as it goes, so with each new accident the standard and accuracy gets better. Of course, it can’t identify unseen structural damage, but by acknowledging that it enables the claims handler to move relevant repairs to the next stage as quickly as possible.’

I Love Claims would like to thank ClaimsTech headline sponsor SightCall, as well partners Google Cloud and Mastercard, gold sponsors CoreLogic, Digilog UK, Entegral, IMS (Insurance Mobility Solutions), Tractable and Verisk, and silver sponsors asTech, Carpe Data, eviid, GT Motive, Service Certainty, and Synergy.