The Inspire Insurtech Interview series is designed to inspire fellow insurtechs. We’d like to share who they are, what they do, and what we can expect from them in the future.
This month, we talked to Dr Mehdi Ravanbakhsh, Co-Founder and CEO of Mapizy. Enjoy!
Tell us the company’s brief pitch.
At Mapizy, we empower insurance carriers with HD property analytics. Advanced mapping data isn’t available and is costly to collect through site visits. We use AI and HD aerial images to remotely assess properties and provide companies with the most up-to-date and comprehensive data in the comfort of their office.
Our AI-powered HD geospatial analytics helps insurers underwrite more accurately and faster, adjust the home premium at renewal and instantly provide accurate quotes. Our unique AI technology provides insurance businesses with advanced property mapping and risk data at unprecedented detail down to roof tile quality.
So how did the company begin?
Over the last 20 years, Mapizy founding team observed that the speed of geospatial data collection from aerial imagery is too slow, which resulted in outdated data not being suitable for many businesses who rely on the most up-to-date data.
In 2014, AI started finding its way into various industries. We saw an opportunity to utilise AI to speed up the process of information extraction from images and founded Mapizy to empower businesses with this important information.
How has the company evolved since its inception?
We initially started with the forestry industry, pivoted a couple of times, won a number of innovative government grants and offered product development services to leading industry organisations such as Toyota, Airbus and Maxar. These activities helped us to bootstrap and kept searching for a bigger problem to solve.
In 2019, we attended the Global Gravity Challenge organised by Deloitte, where Mapizy was awarded twice by leading insurance companies such as IAG and RAA. Since then, we have focused on developing an HD geospatial analytics platform for insurance businesses and launched our platform in 2021. In late 2021, we launched an Urban Analytics platform where insurance companies can monitor their portfolio of properties at the LGA level and create a bigger picture of what, where and how much has changed.
How does your Insurtech improve your customer’s experience?
We believe intelligent use of data is the solution to many challenges the insurance industry faces today. Our instant and near-inspection quality data help our clients achieve efficiency and streamline a number of decision-making processes. Unlike other competitors who provide either aerial images or vector data of properties, we offer HD geospatial analytics with three key advantages:
1. Vector data is costly and requires a GIS team to process
2. HD Analytics give you direct actionable insights
3. You can create analytics instantly and pay for what you use; no need to buy large data.
We have the capacity to rapidly accommodate the requirement of our clients by adding new property attributes. We have developed in-house online labelling tools and an AI training loop through which we can easily and quickly enrich our data offerings. Furthermore, we provide our data in three different delivery modes, namely API, batch processing and desktop app, suitable for both large enterprises and SMEs.
What is the company’s biggest challenge in today’s markets?
To ensure consistency and currency of our data, we have a major challenge to overcome. That is to diversify our aerial image sources to add greater value to our clients. Our data coverage is Australian-wide in 3-6 month time intervals. Adding satellite images to our input data sources reduces the time interval to 1-2 weeks which is critical during natural disasters to quantify property damages and rapidly process claims. Change data is also important to ensure customers have enough protection during renewal.
What is next for your company? What are your big goals for 2022?
More informative content and engagement with insurance businesses are needed to communicate our value proposition. We introduced a new category of mapping data, namely HD geospatial analytics created fresh from aerial images on-demand, and it takes time to demonstrate the value of this new type of data to the industry. We are also looking to build partnerships with innovative insurance businesses and work closely with those early adopters to customise our data analytics further to address specific market needs.
Any advice for other Insurtechs or insurers looking to innovate?
The insurance market is hard to navigate for young innovators. Therefore, early engagement and joining professional organisations like InsurTech Australia is very important to get exposure to the market and address the industry needs better.
Thank You.
