Where we are playing

Real estate asset managers are facing unpredictable climate-related risks and have limited visibility into the financial impacts that can result from changing climate and weather patterns. They are restricted with imperfect tools that seldom provide the data and actionable insights required to influence their investment decisions, including those related to capital allocation and risk management. Most importantly, the market doesn’t offer solutions that integrate mitigation and adaptation strategies into risk-related products.

The ResCentric pilot is focused on real estate asset managers with more than $10bn of assets under management (AUM), with US-located assets that are exposed to high climate risks, the initial focus being on flood and wind. It’s planned to expand the co‑creation partners to include global real estate asset managers with broader, more diverse portfolios (building categories, sectors, etc.).

ResCentric is developing a risk mitigation SaaS platform that will deliver a financial impact assessment and adaptation suite for real estate asset managers. ResCentric combines advanced analytics, predictive science and climate modelling to calculate asset damage vulnerability and its effect on long-term portfolio performance as it relates to climate resilience.

The initiative is currently in the build phase, focused on building a lightweight prototype to engage potential customers to validate our business model and their enthusiasm to pay while fine-tuning product positioning and differentiation.

ResCentric is most valuable to real estate asset managers who hold assets for 7 to 10 years. These managers are constantly pursuing solutions that will help them identify risks to their portfolio related to climate resilience. It’s important to them to understand the financial impact of these risks and the actions they can take to mitigate them.

Munich Re’s reputation as a (re)insurance provider offers real estate asset managers a high level of confidence in methodology and expertise in the traditional mitigation tactics related to risk management. Additionally, many real estate investment trusts (REITs) are actively looking for collaboration, thought leadership and innovation from insurance companies to achieve sustainability goals.

Industrial IoT initiative works on reducing losses in insurance portfolios through IoT technology and on providing holistic pay-per-output models through digital financing, insurance and technology solutions.

The idea behind this is to bring together state-of-the-art technology and digitised finance and insurance to scale down physical and financial losses and optimise output. And take heart to offer radically new models of providing physical production capacities in pay-per-output models.

The target groups of Industrial IoT are primary insurers and equipment manufacturers. Equipment-as-a-Service and Factory-as-a-Service models with partners like Trumpf or Porsche are currently in operation. Based on initial successes for specific occupancies, commercial rollouts of technology solutions for loss prevention and mitigation at portfolio scale are the planned next steps.

What does Munich Re bring in? Munich Re supports the initiative through its unique combination of expertise in risk transfer and financing, technology capabilities and domain know-how.

Imagine a policyholder calling to make a claim, whether it be property or motor related. Within minutes, the policyholder is connected to a customised app on their smartphone with the help of a claims adjuster. The app lets the policyholder record damage on the spot, enables a claims adjuster to view the video or photo(s), as well as capture inspection report notes and even fully settle a claim the same day, in many cases. Underwriters can also use this solution to expedite the underwriting inspection process and eliminate the need for third‑party inspection services.

The Remote Inspection Solution meets the need for high-quality, instantly available data to improve claims and underwriting by leveraging remote technologies, machine learning on aerial imagery and video technology.

In the first step, the main focus of the Remote Inspection Solution lies on property and motor insurance companies, but the plan is to extend to other industries.

Within the innovation process, the Remote Inspection Solution has already come a long way. In the context of property claims, the CatAI solution that assesses property damage after windstorm events could already be a winning combination with Remote Inspection. The initiative’s success lies in constantly rethinking its ideas and in being ready to adjust its technology stack and processing approach.

Developing the idea of Remote Inspection with Munich Re means merging different perspectives on complex issues and creating technology-based solutions with an extraordinary edge.

To leverage the full power of AI, primary insurers need appropriate high-quality data assets and a way to integrate external AI solution providers by meeting high-level security standards. The idea behind LAIA is to provide a marketplace for AI with quality-assured data assets and to connect external AI solution providers and internal AI teams following the strictest compliance requirements.

LAIA reaches out to two target groups – primary insurers seeking to make the best use of AI for their business cases, and AI solution providers with best-in-class offerings for the insurance industry and beyond.

Within the innovation process, LAIA is currently working on live use cases with selected pilot partners. An early mock-up-based approach put everyone in the team at the same stage and improved customer validation. The main thing learnt was that data is key. Its three dimensions – quantity, quality and accessibility – are the greatest challenge to using AI in insurance.

Munich Re supports the innovation idea of LAIA and helps by providing insurers with unique data assets like datasets or pre-trained models. We like to use our position as trusted partner in the market to enable even more primary insurers to harness the power of AI.

Scaling artificial intelligence requires confidence, but established processes to assess AI are still lacking. So how can we trust the algorithm? This is where CertAI kicks in: It evaluates AI along all relevant risk areas in relation to robustness, privacy and fairness, and along all dimensions such as data, algorithms and development process. Based on this assessment, CertAI wants to offer customers quality seals and certifications based on industry standards and international norms. The trust generated through this solution enhances and accelerates sales processes and solution deployment.

CertAI addresses companies and start-ups developing AI that want to assure clients of their offering. CertAI also supports IT procurers who want to know whether they can trust a supplier’s AI solution and helps departments to convince relevant internal stakeholders of the need for faster implementation of AI solutions within their organisation.

After completing product research und identifying partners and ecosystem, first proofs of concept were carried out. It soon became clear that combining competencies in a cooperation set-up and an extended ecosystem meant solving complicated problems that no partner was able to solve on its own.

As a trusted partner, Munich Re supports the innovation process of CertAI with risk assessment expertise, data and analytics capabilities and TIC know-how across the entire company.