Koop Technologies, an insurance technology company specializing in autonomous vehicles and robotics risks, has launched an industry-first Robotics General Liability and Errors & Omissions insurance product in partnership with CJ Coleman and leading Lloyd's of London syndicates. The new coverage is designed for off-road autonomous vehicles and robotics developers, operators, and service providers across various industries.
It provides bespoke ratings using a proprietary risk assessment methodology developed by Koop Technologies. Starting today, the product is available for purchase and distribution to robotics customers and retail brokers on the Singularity Platform™, announced by Koop Technologies earlier this year. The product launch marks the onset of "automation as a class", a category pioneered by Koop Technologies combining on-road and off-road automation use cases bound by software- and hardware-defined risk properties.
"Our new E&O product is designed to meet the unique needs of the robotics ecosystem. Automation is poised for exponential growth, and we are prepared to provide our clients and broker partners with an insurance program and experience created specifically for them," says Kamron Khodjaev, Chief Commercial Officer at Koop Technologies.
"In my 20+ years in the insurance industry, I have always been drawn to ways we can apply technology to improve accuracy, consistency, and scope of data to understand risk better. Autonomy presents an incredible opportunity to advance underwriting in this way, and today, I am thrilled to say that this is exactly what we are delivering here at Koop," adds Andrew Roth, Director of Insurance at Koop Technologies.
"CJ Coleman and I are proud to be supporting cutting edge companies in their growth, and we are excited to have a front row seat, alongside our trusted partners, as autonomy and robotics enter the mainstream," says Hector Fitch, U.S. Lead Casualty Broker at CJ Coleman.
Off-road automation is growing at unprecedented rates, from last-mile delivery to industrial use cases. More than 3 million industrial robots1 are in use today, with an estimated compound annual growth rate of 20%+ over the next decade2. The projected global market for terrestrial autonomous systems is expected to reach $800 billion by the end of the decade3, making it one of the fastest-growing markets ripe for new insurance products. Professional services robots are expected to dominate the sector. Additionally, the COVID pandemic of 2020 accelerated the use of robots. According to the Association for Advancing Automation, orders for workplace robots increased by a record 40% in the U.S. in the first quarter of this year4. The numbers keep growing due to a persistent lack of labor to perform hazardous and repetitive tasks.
Robots have unique technical and safety engineering attributes, making them a compelling risk class for insurance carriers. Koop Technologies developed the toolset to collect and analyze data from autonomous vehicles and robotics fleets, incorporating those risk attributes. It provides an edge in underwriting automation risks that the traditional markets currently underserve. Off-road robotics is one of the segments within the "automation as a class" risk category, where the risk profile shifts from human-centric exposure to software-defined exposure in real-world operating domains.