DS News

52 challenge that the mortgage and housing industries must navigate in the decades to come. With that in mind, DS News has once again checked in with some of the industry's subject matter experts on the topic to learn how the organizations dealing with the front- line fallout are tackling the difficulties and planning for the future. HENRIETTE FLEISCHMANN, Co-Founder, Hosta AI What are the most critical components of how the mortgage industry should prepare to respond to the waves of increasing, and increasingly damaging, natural disasters? All homes with a mortgage have insurance. Making sure that in the event of a disaster, such as a flood or fire, the homeowner can respond quickly and file a claim easily is important. We developed Hosta AI to allow the homeowner to capture images that help assess the damage and process the claim. e idea of getting the homeowner back into the home and return to actively paying the mortgage is essential. e faster the homeowner returns to the home and some sense of normalcy, the less likely the mortgage will default after a disaster. Automate as many processes as possible to work on disaster recovery, provide fast service to people in need, and be cost-effective while providing superior services. What lessons have come out of COVID-19 that can be applied to natural disaster response and assisting impacted homeowners through those challenges? Technology that is hands-off and less intrusive, that doesn't require face-to-face visits, is increasing in popularity. We launched Hosta AI in 2020, during the pandemic. e fact that our technology does not require a visit from an insurance claims representative is a big part of our value proposition. If the homeowner can file the insurance claim with minimal hassle, more claims can be filed quickly and efficiently. Remote services were strongly on the rise during COVID-19. It created a shift in the industry, strongly driven by customers. at enabled a change that was previously considered to be years away in the industry. A huge opportunity to streamline processes, create superior user experience, and leverage a workforce that is just not big enough in cases of disasters. How can technology best be leveraged to help predict, address, and solve these problems? Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more mainstream every day. Technology can be helpful to the consumer and should be leveraged to improve the user experience. Large amounts of data can be harnessed to deliver answers quickly. AI allows us to process mountains of information quickly. If embraced and used properly, various forms of AI can save time and money to execute insurance claims after a natural disaster strikes. ere's a huge opportunity to predict the impact of disasters through existing data—weather forecasts, policy data, aerial images, etc.—and then create rules engines based on those forecasts. For example, when smaller losses are predicted as an outcome of a weather event, Hosta AI can automatically create a link for a policy holder to capture the loss, enable an estimate within a day, and enable the policy holder to get their repair managed in no time. LOUIS HARMAN, Director, Property Preservation and Loss Drafts, Carrington Mortgage Services, LLC What are the most critical components of how the mortgage industry should prepare to respond to the waves of increasing, and increasingly damaging, natural disasters? You need to ingest FEMA declarations as they occur, identify Presidentially Declared Major Disaster Areas (PDMDAs) offering individual assistance—versus other types of declarations and programs—and then verify your exposure. What lessons have come out of COVID-19 that can be applied to natural disaster response and assisting impacted homeowners through those challenges? Tracking natural disasters independent from COVID-19 runs cleaner. Both scenarios can result in a forbearance, and each forbearance can have its own end-date. So, it's a cleaner output to track each event and associated end-date independently. For example, declaration protections tend to expire in 90 days, whereas forbearances tend to carry out for much longer periods. Don't conflate the data. What are some ways climate change is impacting the industry and the way it must do business in the decades to come? Recognizing that PDMDA tracking occurs daily, year-round, and the influence is interdepartmental. Plumb your process to capture each PDMDA lifecycle, triggering communications to customers and mechanisms that identity when customers opt-out of protections, then opt back-in, versus those that remain silent. How can technology best be leveraged to help predict, address, and solve these problems? Technology is the basis to plumb and manage the entire process to capture multiple lifecycles running concurrent at different intervals. Separately, we use tech to assess our national exposure, as well as to identify hot spots where patterns reveal themselves. Are there any other important aspects of Cover Story By: David Wharton "If embraced and used properly, various forms of AI can save time and money to execute insurance claims after a natural disaster strikes." -Henriette Fleischmann, Co-Founder, Hosta AI

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