Drone use, satellite imagery for agriculture insurance may be a must

What is the news?

Govt, IRDAI are considering using artificial intelligence to control fraud claims, cut delays in settlement.

Pilot studies have been undertaken for estimation of yield at the gram panchayat level by using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, among others.

What is being planned?

Use of drones and satellite imaging could be made mandatory for insurers to keep a check on fraudulent and false insurance claims. For agriculture insurance, where claims are dependent on crop and crop-cutting patterns, the plan is to initially make use of satellite imagery and drones for a detailed evaluation of crop produce on a voluntary basis.

Adoption of AI and Big Data: For this, the Centre and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) are in discussions to adopt artificial intelligence and big data to identify manipulation of processes, and reduce delays in settlement of claims.

Further, this could be replicated for industrial insurance as well, due to difficulty in identifying the cause of the problem, and subsequent delay in settlement of claims.

Insurance frauds are reportedly committed at the time of application or claim and cost Rs 45,000 crore per year to insurance companies.

What are the benefits of using tech in agri & industrial insurance?

To prevent fraudulent claims: The use of technology for claim assessment is being pushed to diagnose processes that are being manipulated, leading to fraudulent claims in agricultural as well as industrial insurance.

Use of drones will help in checking the extent of losses in instances such as a fire at the top of a building or oil spillage at sea, where the cause of the problem is difficult to identify or assess.

Source: This post is based on the article “Drone use, satellite imagery for agriculture insurance may be a must” published in Business Standard on 8^th Sep 2021.