Apps That Lessen Worry: Liberty Mutual Insurance’s Solaria Labs Unveils New Developer Portal to Benefit Auto Owners

BOSTON, Jan. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Imagine choosing your driving route based on where you're least likely to have an accident.  Solaria Labs, the innovation incubator recently formed by Liberty Mutual Insurance has set out to make this a reality with a forthcoming open API developer portal that combines public data with proprietary insurance knowledge, helping to inform future products and apps for customers. This technology will be able to help consumers do everything from finding the safest driving route to assessing auto damage from a fender bender with a smartphone camera.

"We introduced this initiative to develop products and services that benefit everyone and ultimately help drivers make informed choices and feel less worry on the road." said Ted Kwartler, assistant vice president, Innovation, at Liberty Mutual Insurance. "We expect to deliver new value to the community with a focus on improving safety by combining our expertise and insights while employing emerging technology."

Later this year, the Solaria Labs developer portal will aggregate public data on auto theft, parking citations as well as crashes using proprietary insurance knowledge.  After signing up, developers and data scientists can analyze the aggregated data to identify, for example, the safest driving routes and places to park in major U.S. cities.  Providing this comprehensive collection of data will help fuel the development of future apps to improve safety for both drivers and passengers.

For example, through a new, experimental app from Liberty Mutual, auto owners could be able to gauge damage to their car in real-time and receive a recommendation on repair costs leveraging their smartphone camera. Using artificial intelligence, the new feature would be based on thousands of car crash photos.

The developer portal is spearheaded by Solaria Labs, the company's in-house technology incubator founded in September 2015. Solaria Labs was established to help solve unmet consumer needs, foster new ideas and attract talent in a startup environment. The lab has partnered with universities, including MIT's AgeLab, to fund research and participate in relevant discoveries on new trends.  This includes next generation vehicles, the sharing economy, and connected home products that enable real-time connectivity in the areas of security, efficiency, safety and convenience.

"The developer portal is just one example of the exciting work being done through Solaria Labs," said Adam L'Italien, vice president, Innovation, Liberty Mutual Insurance. "At Solaria, we're bringing to life new, transformational products and services in areas of importance to our customers and look forward to developing more preventative and helpful solutions for the future."

Solaria Labs will also soon be launching a new location in Singapore.  Through the new Solaria Labs location, Liberty Mutual will work collaboratively within the robust Singapore innovation ecosystem to explore new ways of combining auto, home, environmental and infrastructure data to assess risk- ultimately helping people live safer lives.

To learn more about the developer portal, visit https://www.solarialabs.com
Additional details on Solaria Labs can also be found at https://welcome.libertymutual.com/innovation/.

About Liberty Mutual Insurance
Liberty Mutual Insurance helps people preserve and protect what they earn, build, own and cherish. Keeping this promise means we are there when our policyholders throughout the world need us most.

In business since 1912, and headquartered in Boston, Mass., today Liberty Mutual is a diversified insurer with operations in 29 countries and economies around the world. We are the fifth largest property and casualty insurer in the U.S. based on 2015 direct written premium data as reported by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. We also rank 73^rd on the Fortune 100 list of largest corporations in the U.S. based on 2015 revenue. Liberty employs over 50,000 people in more than 800 offices throughout the world.

The fifth largest auto and home insurer in the U.S., Liberty Mutual (libertymutual.com) sells full lines of coverage for automobile, homeowners, valuable possessions, personal liability, and individual life insurance. We are an industry leader in affinity partnerships, offering car and home insurance to employees and members of more than 15,000 companies, credit unions, professional associations and alumni groups.

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SOURCE Liberty Mutual Insurance