Vehicle insurance provider United Services Automobile Association is using artificial intelligence to try to speed up its claims process.

The company today said it has partnered with Google Cloud to create customized machine learning models that can instantly assess vehicle damage from digital images, allowing for faster and more cost-efficient estimates.

USAA said it’s trying to address one of the most time-consuming and laborious aspects of the claims process, which is the need to manually inspect each vehicle following an accident. Assessing damage in monetary terms is a tricky job because the claims adjuster needs to determine not only which parts have to be replaced and how much they will cost, but also the cost of labor involved in the repairs.

Once that’s done, a report must then be submitted for approval before the estimate can be shared with the car owner and repair shop. As anyone who has made a claim on their vehicle knows, the entire process can sometimes take several weeks to conclude.

With its Mitchell Estimating platform, USAA is hopeful that it will be able to eliminate that cumbersome process entirely and assess customer’s claims in a matter of minutes. All the appraiser needs to do now is take photos of the damaged vehicle, upload them to google Cloud and let the platform do the rest. As well as assessing the actual damage, the platform can search databases relating to parts and labor and come up with an accurate estimate of how much it will cost to repair the vehicle.

“This technology now gives claims teams the opportunity to focus more deeply on connecting and providing guidance to our members, during what can often be a trying time,” said Ramon Lopez, USAA’s vice president of innovation.

USAA said early tests of its machine learning models are encouraging, since they’ve been able to predict “high-level damage” across a range of vehicles with great accuracy. Now ready for prime time, the software is already being used by USAA to handle numerous claims where there’s only minor damage involved.

The company plans to add more features to streamline the claims process so eventually the majority of “low-complexity” assessments will be “touchless.”

Photo: NettoFigueiredo/Pixabay