Roost Announces Partnership with Desjardins

21/03/17 / by Roost

Roost and Desjardins, Canada’s third largest property and casualty home insurer, have announced a partnership to begin deployment of the Roost Home Telematics Solution nationwide across Canada.  Each qualified policyholder of Desjardins, The Personal and State Farm Canada home insurance brands will be offered a free Roost Smart Water Leak and Freeze Detector to place in their home to help reduce water damage and provide more peace of mind.

The Partnership:
Desjardins, a recognized leader in insurance innovation, pioneered the deployment of Ajusto, the first smartphone telematics app in North America.  With the Roost Home Telematics solution, Desjardins will focus on expanding this app with the introduction of Alert – offering new functionality that enables prevention of water damage in the home.  This peril alone accounts for more than 50% of home insurance claims in Canada every year.

Through this new Alert mobile app, clients will have the ability to receive early notification of a water leak via an alert on their smartphone when they’re away from home.  In this way, a large disaster can be minimized for the homeowner, benefitting both the homeowner and the insurer. In addition to preventing major water damage, the detector includes temperature and humidity sensors that diagnose and alert consumers on their smartphone to several key home emergencies including:

  1. Water damage due to leaks from broken pipes, appliances and basement leaks
  2. Frozen pipe water damage
  3. Mold and mildew damage caused by high humidity conditions
  4. Abnormal home indoor temperature, indicating potential problems with heating and cooling systems

The Product Solution:
With a sleek, modern, low profile design, each detector has two small concentric metal rings on the bottom that trigger a notification when initial water contact is made.  Additionally, there is a temperature and humidity sensor embedded inside that records a data point every 30 min to capture historic trends.  With the ability to set custom thresholds, notifications are triggered whenever these limits are crossed. These capabilities enable the estimated 3-year battery life from the 4 AAA batteries.

The Broader Impact:
Through this partnership, Roost Home Telematics and Desjardins are demonstrating a more symbiotic relationship between policyholder and insurance provider with a simple, affordable, and effective smart home solution for water damage.

The potential impact can ultimately be quantifiable in several ways:

  • Increased engagement – Providing a simple water leak detector transforms the inherent insurance relationship from being intangible to tangible.  The ability to communicate via verified email, SMS or smartphone notification in many cases is groundbreaking to many insurers.
  • Increased retention – Changing the nature of the relationship to one of caring for the client’s home safety and peace of mind can be powerful.  Improving loyalty measured by NPS and creating lifetime relationships.
  • Lower claim costs and loss ratios – With increased deployment of Roost devices over time, the quantified actuarial impact will be established and validated.
  • Market share growth – Growth and market share gain go to those that lead and embrace new technology disruption.  When everyone else is doing it, you’re playing catch-up to hold onto share.

Home Telematics is the next step in the evolution of smart home technology and its integration with the insurance industry. As this program commences, we believe Desjardins will see increased customer satisfaction, reduced water claims, and overall growth as their brand becomes synonymous with innovation.

The Opportunity:
Check out our Insurance Partner page with all the details of Roost’s Home Telematics Solution.  For a limited time, we are also offering a free Roost Smart Water Leak and Freeze Detector to prospective qualified insurance partners.  We are presently working with a number of other top insurance companies and will continue to share these partnerships with our Roost community over the coming months.

Come see us:
We are presently finalizing our event schedule for 2017.  Please come see us at the following upcoming conferences and contact Jim Strickland if you’d like to set up a meeting: Strickland@roostlabs.com

– The Roost Team