Nearmap & Betterview: Investing in the Future of Property Insurance

The insurance industry, and the technology that supports it, have seen significant change over the last few years. New technology continues to come to market, changing how insurers: build new products, understand risk, mitigate changing weather patterns, and ultimately provide greater service to their customers. We have seen a shift in the industry from a repair and replace to a predict and prevent mindset. At Betterview, we have been honored to contribute to that evolution. 

Today, as part of Nearmap, we are excited to continue creating the tools and insights our customers depend on to grow their businesses and provide greater support and care to their policyholders. Together, Nearmap and Betterview have combined our products, talent, and expertise to create the market’s first end-to-end remote property intelligence solution—from imagery to insights to answers. Why? 

Better Customer Solutions

36% of all property claims in the US come from roof-related claims. It is a huge problem for insurers as they try to accurately price, underwrite, and respond to claims. Growing up in the inspection business, I knew getting accurate views of roofs and properties was always a significant problem. In my inspection business, we tried putting cameras on painter’s poles and in the early days of Betterview, we used drones. Still, sending out inspection teams armed with these tools was costly, time-consuming, and added additional liability to the insurer. The industry needed a scalable and efficient way to quickly understand the condition of roofs and properties across their entire portfolios. At Betterview, we fell in love with the problem so we could find the best solution—the solution we found was leveraging manned aerial imagery to build our Property Intelligence Platform. 

This was no small task, as over the last decade, we worked with many imagery providers to best help insurers accurately understand risk and mitigate losses. We worked with everything from drones to satellites, to balloons. Yet, aerial imagery provided the greatest combination of scale, recency and resolution needed to create our platform and provide the fastest, most accurate results to our customers. The only partnership that consistently provided all three (scale, recency and resolution) was Nearmap.

Better Imagery

Nearmap builds cameras in-house specifically for complex aerial captures, grabbing multiple angles at once—vertical, oblique, panoramic, orthographic, and even 3D. They systematically fly multiple times a year to provide the most consistent and recent imagery across multiple seasons for the best views of structures with foliage and without. It has the highest quality processing and speed to market, with imagery available days or even hours after a flight. Beyond systematic capture, Nearmap flies severe weather events and catastrophic storms (CAT) as soon as it is safe to get in the air. Post-event imagery is available within days after an event. Simply put, Nearmap is the most consistent, reliable, high-quality aerial imagery provider on the market (read more about why aerial imagery is the best imagery source).

Better Intelligence

Betterview applies computer vision and machine learning to imagery, creating a system that detects and scores property condition, models risk, and predicts loss. We worked tirelessly to refine our software, evolve models, and test against real-world historical data to provide our customers with the best possible geospatial analytics platform.

Source: CB Insights, December 2023

The key word there is “platform.” Insurance companies consume a lot of data to model and determine risk. But, they need tools to sift through the data and provide relevant insights to drive efficient and scalable action. The Betterview Property Intelligence Platform is purpose-built to help insurance companies: increase quoting speed and accuracy, optimize underwriting efficiency, enhance property risk mitigation, and expedite claims processes without the reliance on costly, time-consuming physical inspections. In fact, we were proud to build solutions recognized as the industry-leading platform. 

Source: CB Insights, December 2023

#BetterTogether

Nearmap was a longstanding Betterview partner and after our long history together, we understood combining our efforts would rapidly accelerate our ability to produce outstanding products and solutions for our customers. With proprietary access to the best source imagery and the backing of greater R&D resources, the Betterview/Nearmap team can build the most robust condition detections, build stronger and more accurate models, and deliver faster insights. Nearmap would gain a team with deep insurance knowledge and a mature, industry-leading intelligence platform, adding to its ability to serve the insurance market. Both companies shared common values and cultures. We knew the combined power of our two companies would allow us to better serve the insurance industry and our customers.  

And so, Betterview was happily adopted into the Nearmap family at the end of last year (2023). 

Combined, we support roughly 200 insurance companies with end-to-end property and location intelligence — from imagery to insight to answers. We look forward to helping more of the industry as we continue to grow together. As the industry continues to mature and other solutions move on, our customers are guaranteed to continue receiving the most comprehensive products and services from the market's only complete property intelligence stack. 

Better Already!

Want to learn more, ask questions, or see the new stuff we have already built together? Join Nearmap Chief Product Officer Don Weigel and myself in an upcoming webinar. We will discuss the Nearmap and Betterview integration, showcase our combined capabilities and recent results, and preview some new technologies we are working for the future. 

Discover how the Betterview Platform by Nearmap: 

• Increases Decision-Making Speed & Accuracy 
• Can be used to Rate More Accurately & Effectively 
• Redefines Efficiency in Underwriting & Inspections 
• Enhances Risk Management 
• Transforms Catastrophe (CAT) Response  

The Betterview Platform by Nearmap 
#BETTERTOGETHER