Insurance Times Awards 2022: Zurich uses ‘untapped’ data ‘to achieve safer, smarter and more sustainable buildings’

Explain briefly about your entry in the Insurer Innovation of the Year category.

We’ve seen telematics being used in the motor market for many years and, more recently, in life insurance via wearables. But despite similar data being available for buildings, insurers are not using it to help customers mitigate and monitor risk, or prevent business interruption.

Many buildings already have a network of sensors, whether they are schools, offices, hotels or retail outlets.

Zurich Insite listens to the data a building creates and generates key information that enables customers to unlock benefits in sustainability, risk and operational performance.

By taking our traditional risk engineering approach and combining it with new technology, we’ve created a new risk management solution that offers increased benefits to our customers, underwriters and claims teams.

What do you think makes your entry stand out or different from your competition?

The unique combination of using building data to monitor and mitigate risk, improve operational performance and make more efficient use of energy is a first of its kind.

We’re empowering organisations to utilise data that is already present - but currently untapped - to achieve safer, smarter and more sustainable buildings.

What would winning this award mean to you and your firm?

It would be great for the industry to put a spotlight on the use of the Internet of Things in buildings as this has to be something insurers need to get better at.

As well as blazing a trail in risk management, our solution also helps organisations with one of the most pressing challenges we all face today – reducing our impact on the planet.