Risk Management
Nearmap | December 07, 2023
Nearmap, one of the world's largest location intelligence and aerial imagery solutions providers, has signed an agreement to acquire Betterview, a leading property intelligence and risk management platform in the insurance industry.
Founded in Australia in 2007, Nearmap expanded operations into the U.S. in 2014 to help companies better visualize the truth on the ground to make more informed business decisions. Today's announcement marks a significant milestone in the advancement of the Nearmap global growth strategy. This will reinforce the company's position as a leading source of imagery intelligence, data and solutions, and expand and complement its expertise and capabilities for insurance customers and partners.
"The Nearmap acquisition of Betterview is transformative for the industry,"
said Andy Watt, CEO of Nearmap.
Integrating the Betterview platform and AI solutions into the Nearmap technology stack will enable better visualization of the truth on the ground with a richer, more powerful set of AI capabilities that combine the best of both companies. This is a significant milestone in our ongoing efforts to innovate solutions for insurance carriers, and expand our presence within the property and casualty space.
[Source -PR Newswire]
Betterview is an established and trusted source of property intelligence and risk management for the insurance industry, applying artificial intelligence and computer vision to help identify and mitigate property risk, improve and automate underwriting and inspection workflows, and provide a more productive, seamless customer experience.
"Combining the offerings of two best-in-class providers will deliver greater impact for insurers," said Betterview Co-Founder and CEO David Lyman. "The acquisition of Betterview by Nearmap will increase access to premium imagery and cutting-edge, scalable property intelligence solutions for the insurance industry."
"We are optimistic about the outcomes this acquisition will bring to our customers, the potential for developing even greater products together, and the impact it will have on the future of the insurance industry," said Betterview Co-Founder and COO Dave Tobias.
Nearmap and Betterview will harness the power of the leading image intelligence and property risk-management technology solutions — including a historical archive for change analysis, comprehensive post-catastrophe imagery, and AI attributes — to provide customers and partners with greater certainty and clarity, through
More efficient development of insurance solutions and capabilities
Faster and more accurate underwriting, property condition identification, and overall mitigation of risk
Enhanced visualization and interpretation of over 100 AI-powered property attributes
Deeper analytics, with more recency, and regularity through insights easily accessible within a browser, via API or business intelligence tools, or seamlessly integrated with existing underwriting or claims core systems
From imagery to insights to answers, this acquisition aligns with the Nearmap long-term global vision to be the source of truth that shapes our livable world.
Completion of the acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Jefferies served as exclusive financial advisor to Betterview.
About Nearmap
Nearmap provides easy, instant access to high-resolution aerial imagery, city-scale 3D content, AI data sets, and geospatial tools. Using its own patented camera systems and processing software, Nearmap captures wide-scale urban areas in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand several times each year, making current content instantly available in the cloud via web app or API integration. Every day, Nearmap helps thousands of users conduct virtual site visits for deep, data-driven insights—enabling informed decisions, streamlined operations, and better financial performance. Founded in Australia in 2007, Nearmap is one of the largest aerial survey companies in the world.
About Betterview
Betterview is the Property Intelligence & Risk Management Solution the insurance industry depends on to identify and mitigate property risk, improve underwriting and inspection efficiency, and build a more transparent customer experience. Applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) and computer vision to aerial imagery and geospatial data, Betterview generates the most accurate property information insurers trust to automate pricing, underwriting, and renewals while focusing strategic action on critical properties, helping transform property insurance from Repair and Replace to Predict and Prevent.
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Core Insurance
PR Newswire | October 25, 2023
Higginbotham, the largest independent insurance, financial and HR services firm headquartered in Texas and one of the top firms in the country, has joined forces with Bourg Insurance, a long-term family business with deep ties to the South Louisiana community.
As Higginbotham celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, Chairman and CEO Rusty Reid credits careful, strategic growth for the company's long-term success. Under Reid's guidance, the company seeks partners with sterling reputations in their local markets and strong cultural affinities.
At Higginbotham, we place tremendous importance on family — which is how we view our team — and on service to our community, Reid said. If you're looking around for a similar family- and community-oriented business partner, you have to be looking at the Bourg family in South Louisiana.
Bourg Insurance President Brad Bourg, who runs the business alongside his brother Brennan Bourg, brother-in-law Chuck Leblanc — and third brother Bert Bourg, who has long been an important part of the business but is now taking a well-earned retirement — elaborated, "Our father, Claude 'Toby' Bourg, Jr., started this company back in 1958, and our flagship office is still located in our family hometown of Donaldsonville, Louisiana. It's a matter of real pride to us that so many of our clients come from word of mouth, because they know who we are."
"They know we believe in community involvement and that we're service-oriented, which are two things that really work together," Brennan Bourg, who serves as vice president, agreed. "When you're locally conscious and active in your community, you know how to provide the personalized service that your clients deserve."
"Of course, that's what drew us to Higginbotham," said Chuck Leblanc, who also serves as vice president while running the commercial lines department and managing the Donaldsonville office. "It's that family and community culture. We were approached by plenty of other firms, but in the end, we unanimously agreed that Higginbotham was most closely aligned with our way of doing business."
The Bourg brothers — Brad, Brennan and brother-in-law Chuck — also pointed out that they are looking forward to the opportunities the collaboration with Higginbotham will provide to their clients, as well as to their team, who will be eligible to take part in a top-tier employee ownership plan.
"We've been a small business for years," Brad explained. "With Higginbotham, we'll have technology and support to move that forward, providing the same services but on a larger scale."
"Access to markets, scalability, professionalism — and of course, a great brand," Brennan agreed. "Higginbotham brings so much to the table, and we're thrilled to be adding their name alongside ours."
For Higginbotham, the partnership with Bourg Insurance fortifies our existing footprint within Louisiana and provides significant opportunity for continued growth.
"Our company has deep ties in this area, being here as long as we have," Brad explained. "With this alliance, Higginbotham gets a nice footprint throughout South Louisiana."
"And they get us," Chuck concluded. "We're not retiring! Quite the opposite. We're looking forward to the future with Higginbotham, serving our clients just as this business has for the past 65 years."
About Bourg Insurance
Founded in 1958 by Claude 'Toby' Bourg, Jr. and his wife Edith, Bourg Insurance is a personal and commercial property and casualty, life and health insurance agency located in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, with additional offices in Prairieville, Chauvin and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Now a Higginbotham partner agency, Bourg Insurance is run by Toby and Edith's sons, Brad and Brennan, and son-in-law Chuck Leblanc, as a family- and community-oriented business with a strong emphasis on personal lines and small to middle market companies in the real estate, restaurant and construction sectors, among others. As an agency built on relationships and personal service, Bourg Insurance has won numerous Distinguished Agency awards.
About Higginbotham
Employee owned and customer inspired, Higginbotham is a single source solution for insurance, financial and HR services. The firm was established in 1948 and ranks by revenue as the nation's 21st largest independent insurance firm. Serving thousands of businesses and individuals through locations coast-to-coast, Higginbotham's approach to finding insurance, employee benefit and risk management solutions is more individual and less institutional. By understanding customer priorities, eliminating inefficiencies and committing to transparency, Higginbotham is a place that leads with values so value leads.
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Insurance Technology
PR Newswire | October 05, 2023
MongoDB, Inc. (NASDAQ: MDB) today at MongoDB.local Boston, announced the launch of MongoDB Atlas for Healthcare and MongoDB Atlas for Insurance, two new initiatives that help companies in these industries accelerate their pace of innovation and better serve end-users with modern, data-driven applications. MongoDB Atlas for Healthcare and MongoDB Atlas for Insurance include expert-led innovation workshops, tailored technology partnerships, and industry-specific knowledge accelerators to provide customized training paths designed for a range of use cases that developers in these industries work with. To learn more about MongoDB Atlas for Industries, visit https://www.mongodb.com/industries.
Organizations in the healthcare and insurance industries depend on large volumes of highly sensitive data to make critical decisions about patient care and coverage policies for customers. However, these industries face challenges not only from legacy applications that rely on siloed data, but also complex networks of providers and organizations. These constraints prevent them from realizing the full potential of their data, said Boris Bialek, Field CTO of Industry Solutions at MongoDB. With the launch of MongoDB Atlas for Healthcare and MongoDB Atlas for Insurance, we're alleviating these challenges by providing organizations with the tools required to build modern applications that increase operational efficiency and productivity. Deploying modern applications with MongoDB can help increase interoperability across entire enterprises that enable healthcare organizations to harness real-time patient insights and build personalized care pathways, and for insurers to capitalize on AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics to modernize their underwriting and claims processes.
MongoDB Atlas for Healthcare and MongoDB Atlas for Insurance include solutions and capabilities that can help organizations reimagine how they interact with end users by deploying data-driven applications with the flexibility, security, and resilience the healthcare and insurance industries require:
Migrate and modernize legacy applications with minimal risk and zero downtime: For organizations in the healthcare and insurance industries that want to move from legacy relational databases to modern applications on MongoDB Atlas, MongoDB Relational Migrator reduces the time, cost, and risk typically associated with these projects–making it significantly faster and easier to optimize operations and accelerate innovation. MongoDB Relational Migrator analyzes legacy databases, automatically generates new data schema and code to operate migrated applications, and then executes a seamless migration to MongoDB Atlas with no downtime required. Organizations can run the migrated, modernized application in a testing environment before deploying to production to ensure it is optimized and performing as intended. MongoDB Relational Migrator provides companies in the healthcare and insurance industries with the flexibility to move to MongoDB Atlas quickly and efficiently, so they can focus on building and shipping world-class applications.
Protect sensitive data throughout applications: With MongoDB Queryable Encryption, healthcare and insurance organizations can ensure full-lifecycle encryption of sensitive data—including patient records, medical histories, and insurance claims—not only in-transit over networks and at-rest during storage, but also while data is in use during querying. MongoDB Queryable Encryption provides state-of-the-art encryption that helps reduce data exfiltration and operational risk with an easy-to-use capability organizations can use to secure highly sensitive workloads with no cryptography expertise required. With MongoDB Queryable Encryption, developers in these industries working with highly sensitive information can protect their data throughout its entire lifecycle when being stored, queried, and processed on MongoDB.
Run data-driven applications anywhere: MongoDB Atlas for the Edge enables organizations to deploy applications closer to where real-time data is generated, processed and stored, across mobile and IoT devices, on-premises servers, and multiple major cloud providers. For example, healthcare providers can seamlessly deploy applications across mobile devices and on-premises servers for interacting with patients and accessing medical records when internet connectivity is unavailable—while also ensuring data is synchronized with the cloud once connectivity is available. Insurance companies can also deploy applications across mobile devices for use cases that simplify underwriting, claims processing, and build new cross-industry products and services. MongoDB Atlas for the Edge enables organizations to build, deploy, and manage applications that are accessible virtually anywhere without the complexity typically associated with operating distributed applications at the edge.
Reimagine possibilities with innovation workshops: Both MongoDB Atlas for Healthcare and MongoDB Atlas for Insurance include dedicated executive engagement with industry experts from MongoDB and the MongoDB Partner Ecosystem to ideate client-specific solutions using best practices developed through proven industry experience. Healthcare and insurance innovation workshops are tailored to address the unique challenges and opportunities that these organizations face so they can modernize their operations with security and compliance in mind.
Jumpstart application development: With MongoDB Atlas for Healthcare and MongoDB Atlas for Insurance, organizations can engage with the MongoDB Professional Services team to take advantage of healthcare and insurance expertise and accelerate projects from concept to prototype to production in less time. Experts from the MongoDB Professional Services team can work backward from an organization's specific challenges to conduct architectural reviews, and help quickly prototype proofs of concept for ideation before moving new applications to production.
Upskill teams to quickly build modern applications: MongoDB Atlas for Healthcare and MongoDB Atlas for Insurance provide tailored MongoDB University courses and learning materials, including unlimited access to curated webinars and solutions sessions, to help developers learn how to quickly build modern applications for the healthcare and insurance fields. Organizations can benefit from training new and experienced developers from the ground up on how to build modern, data-driven applications to modernize operations and reimagine end user experiences.
To get started with MongoDB Atlas for Healthcare, visit https://www.mongodb.com/industries/healthcare, and to get started with MongoDB Atlas for Insurance, visit https://www.mongodb.com/industries/insurance.
GE HealthCare is a leader in precision care, infusing innovation with patient-focused technologies to enable better care. "GE Healthcare turned to MongoDB to manage the lifecycle of our IoT devices, from deployment to retirement," said Emir Biser, Senior Data Architect at GE HealthCare. "MongoDB Atlas is a gamechanger. This technology stack is helping us streamline commercialization and bring market-ready solutions to deliver advanced healthcare. Some of the recent tests resulted in an 83% decrease in retrieval time for critical data elements."
Inovaare Corporation is a leading provider of AI-powered compliance automation solutions for healthcare payers. "Recognizing the significance of compliance in today's healthcare environment, Inovaare sought a solution that could not only help navigate the intricacies of this domain but also bring forth profound industry expertise into the mix," said Mohar Mishra, CTO and Co-Founder at Inovaare Corporation. "MongoDB Atlas fortifies our data infrastructure and enables streamlined data processing for robust analytics and reporting capabilities. Additionally, we rely on MongoDB Atlas Vector Search to deliver context-aware compliance guidance and real-time data-driven insights. MongoDB has been instrumental in helping us consistently deliver state-of-the-art compliance solutions that empower healthcare payers."
Redcliffe Labs is India's fastest-growing omnichannel diagnostics service provider focussing on providing quality-led conclusive diagnostics to Indian citizens. "We have been working constantly to improve customer experiences and convenience by embracing innovative technologies," said Prabhat Pankaj, Chief Technology Officer at Redcliffe Labs. "To achieve that goal, we have leveraged the adaptable document database model of MongoDB Atlas to power our Smart Health Report, a resource that summarizes a range of indicators and trackers along with health tips, and dietary recommendations to evaluate holistic health. We are confident that this partnership will enable us to provide our customers with effective services."
Helvetia is one of the largest Swiss insurance companies, serving over 7 million personal and corporate customers across Europe. "Insurance policies are composed of many diverse attributes, while customer data is hierarchically structured. Trying to fit these flexible structures into rigid rows and columns of a relational database would add a lot of friction to our developers," said Daniel Maier, Lead Solution Architect at Helvetia. "MongoDB Atlas Search is blazing fast! We can surface relevant results from data sets with tens of millions of documents in around 15ms. Atlas Search has also given us a cleaner and simpler architecture. We can create new indexes in a single API call, and data is automatically synced between the database and search index, giving consistent, high quality query results. Developer and operational overhead is reduced, creating cost and time savings which we can reinvest back into building products for our customers."
About MongoDB Atlas for Industries
MongoDB for Healthcare and MongoDB Atlas for Insurance are both part of MongoDB Atlas for Industries, a program that helps organizations accelerate cloud adoption and modernization by leveraging industry-specific expertise, programs, partnerships, and integrated solutions. To get started with MongoDB Atlas for Industries, visit mongodb.com/industries.
About MongoDB Atlas
MongoDB Atlas is the leading multi-cloud developer data platform that accelerates and simplifies building applications with data. MongoDB Atlas provides an integrated set of data and application services in a unified environment that enables development teams to quickly build with the performance and scale modern applications require. Tens of thousands of customers and millions of developers worldwide rely on MongoDB Atlas every day to power their business-critical applications. To get started with MongoDB Atlas, visit mongodb.com/atlas.
About MongoDB
Headquartered in New York, MongoDB's mission is to empower innovators to create, transform, and disrupt industries by unleashing the power of software and data. Built by developers, for developers, our developer data platform is a database with an integrated set of related services that allow development teams to address the growing requirements for today's wide variety of modern applications, all in a unified and consistent user experience. MongoDB has tens of thousands of customers in over 100 countries. The MongoDB database platform has been downloaded hundreds of millions of times since 2007, and there have been millions of builders trained through MongoDB University courses. To learn more, visit mongodb.com.
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