Drones for Insurance Inspections

Here at DroneWorxs, your number one Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast & Brisbane aerial photography company, we talk a lot about different types of inspections that can be completed by drones. Yet another one that is fairly new that we do with our commercial UAVs is insurance inspections.

What Are Insurance Inspections?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with insurance inspections, they essentially are an insurance company’s way of trying to find anything wrong with the house being insured. This is helpful to both the insurance company and the homeowners, as they may not be aware of minor damages that are hard to reach.

They can really be for anything being insured, but we’ll only be talking about houses, as that is what drones are used for. They usually fall under one of two categories: inspections for a new policy or for a new claim.

Inspections for a New Policy

Most of the time if you get a new insurance policy on your house, the company will send out an inspector to make sure there are no problems with it. This is especially common with a used house, as they want to make sure everything is up to code and there aren’t any damages left behind from the previous tenants.

They won’t cover any pre-existing damages and they want to make sure the owners don’t submit a claim for something that was already damaged; whether they were aware or not. The next reason for an inspection deals with a claim.

Inspections for a Claim

If you file an insurance claim, then the insurance company will most likely send out an inspector to make sure your claim has validity. A common example is if you have insurance on your roof and there’s a major leak in it.

An inspector would come out to verify everything is on the up and up, and then reject or approve your claim. Once it’s approved, then they would get into the financial details about it and when a repair would take place.

Drones for Insurance Inspections

Now that you have some basic knowledge of what these inspections entail, let’s get into the role of the UAV. The basic goal is to find anything wrong with the property that may need repair before an insurance policy is issued.

Drones are most commonly used for roofs as these are some of the most damaged places in homes and the ones that need to be inspected the most. They also are much harder to reach and drones can maneuver through them with ease.

Benefits of Using Drones

So, why use drones for these jobs? People are probably able to inspect things better, as they are able to move and see things up close, so why drones?

While that is true, drones are still far superior to people and that is primarily due to their speed of the job. What normally would take a person hours moving ladders and walking around the property, a drone can complete the job in as little as 15 minutes. It can move slowly and hover, meaning the UAV can get within centimeters from what needs to be inspected.

As DroneWorxs is the leader of Brisbane aerial photography companies, the cameras we use to shoot in 4k and are therefore able to capture the minutest details with our drones. The camera’s gimbals also help in navigating and getting the best possible views. That is important because insurance inspections need to capture even the smallest of problems.

Also having video proof can be beneficial to both sides, as everything is documented. If a claim is made on some part of the roof, the insurance company can easily pull up the video to verify that no damage had been done before. It’s a way to make sure everything is recorded.

One last benefit of using drones is that it is much safer. When inspecting with drones, you aren’t putting any human lives in danger by climbing on ladders and walking on high roofs. Drones can go more places than people can and safety isn’t an issue with them.

Speeding Up the Entire Process

As a result of these many benefits, using drones can help speed up the process of filing an insurance claim to receiving a price estimate dramatically. If you’ve ever had to deal with filing a claim, you may know how slow the whole thing can move. This can be really frustrating, as you probably want the issue fixed as quickly as possible.

Drones speed up the process not only because how fast they are, but also because everything can be recorded. The second the entire inspection is completed and recorded, the video can be sent to the company to analyze it. Once it is, then a cost estimate can be made.

Who’s Using Them?

Obviously, we can use our commercial UAVs for insurance inspections, but there are actually a lot of big name companies doing so as well.

Allstate, one of the largest home and auto insurance companies in the world, has started using drones for routine home inspections. This is great exposure for the drone industry, as it is more and more becoming a mainstream application.

Even better, Allstate says they consider this test run a success and that they will most likely try to implement this technology as much as they can. They noted the big reasons were that how fast the inspections could be done and how it can speed up the overall process; both of which are benefits discussed earlier. They said that when using drones for storm damage, they were able to issue a repair estimate within 4 and a half days; normally, that would take 11.

What We Offer at DroneWorxs

If you notice from our site, we offer a ton of drone services, and insurance inspections are one of our newest. We have tons of experience in drone photography and other inspections and insurance inspections are no problem at all.

If you are an insurance company or homeowner who needs a home inspected, contact us and we’d be glad to give you an estimate.