Insurance industry takes considerable interest in commercial drones

liability Insurance industry policy for drones

Insurers have started catching onto what many other sectors have been doing with these flying devices.

Across the United States, Canada and several other countries, the insurance industry has been watching the use of commercial drones by real estate agents for listings, farmers for crop monitoring and even mapping for the oil sands, as the use of these flying devices does come with a certain degree of risk.

Insurance companies have spotted this risk and are coming up with products to help protect businesses using drones.

Drones can offer amazing camera angles and footage that simply isn’t available through any other affordable means, but even the most experienced drone pilots can experience rough landings or crashes that can lead to damage or injury. As a part of this trend, Intact Financial Corp has become one of the insurance companies that have been among those that have stepped into this market for insuring unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which is the official designation for devices like drones.

As UAVs aren’t protected by standard coverage in the insurance industry, new products are appearing to fill the gap.

Insurance industry policy for dronesA typical commercial insurance policy doesn’t take UAVs into its protection, which means that businesses using drones are doing so at their own risk. But insurance companies such as Intact Financial have seen this coverage gap and are becoming quite quick to snatch up the opportunity to offer a new and potentially helpful product.

According to the Intact senior vice president of commercial lines, Alain Lessard, “All of a sudden, they start – rather than walking the fields – using drones to take pictures and see if there are issues.” He went on to add that “A person could be sued because the drone hit someone.”

Therefore, just as commercial drone use truly starts taking off – so to speak, insurance companies are making sure that their customers have the right types of protection available to them to overcome the potential hazards linked to the use of those gadgets. A prediction from aerospace market analysis firm, Teal Group, has indicated that this global market will rise to $11.5 billion by 2024 and the insurance industry isn’t about to miss out on that space.

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