We’re all spending a lot more time at home and starting to notice the things that annoy us: the way that one tap drips after using, or noting down the interior changes we’re going to make once the lockdown is over.
Protecting your home is just as important as decorating it and London start-up Hero Labs has a new smart home insurance product, called Hiro, that aims to do just that. Instead of telling customers to buy certain smart home devices to bring down the cost of insurance, they will instead be rewarded with discounts for the tech they already have in their homes.
If you have smart home tech such as cameras, video doorbells or detect leakers, which help to prevent some of the most common causes of damage to homes and flats, then you will be able to benefit from cheaper insurance premiums, up to 25 per cent in some cases. Hero Labs launched its own smart leak detector at the end of last year which uses ultrasonic tech to monitor water use and AI algorithms to spot if anything unusual happens.
For those who don’t already own smart home tech, they will be able to buy different gadgets and devices at a cheaper price via the marketplace in the Hiro app.
Hero Labs will use tech in other ways for its Hiro product, such as using machine learning to automate simple tasks and settle claims faster than traditional insurers. Hero Labs CEO Krystian Zajac says this is about helping people protect their homes.
“Not a lot of people know this, but insurance was originally about working together to stop bad things from happening. The first professional fire service was a home insurance company. They would literally come to your house and help you put the fire out,” he explained.
Hiro is set to launch later this year, though the waiting list is open already at gethiro.com. In the meantime, you can download the Hiro app now and estimate how much money you could save based on your smart home tech.
Hero Labs isn’t the only company using AI to revolutionise insurance. London-based start-up Brolly has an AI policy management tool which scans all your emails and brings together all the different policies in one place. Its own insurance policy, Brolly Contents, uses computer vision to identify the worth of your items, before personalising a quote.
