Patent Issued for Gamification Of Renter’S/Homeowner’S Insurance Products (USPTO 10,262,375)

2019 APR 26 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- According to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx journalists, a patent by the inventor Howard, Christopher (San Antonio, TX), filed on July 13, 2016, was published online on April 29, 2019.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 10,262,375, is United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “The present disclosure relates to risk management services, and more particularly, to gamifying such services.

“Today, various types of risk management services, such as insurance providers, use a variety of platforms to reach an ever-increasing customer base. In particular, insurance providers leverage the power and reach of networks such as the Internet, and provide an environment to advertise, solicit, send information regarding various services, and otherwise provide access to manage insurance services for respective policy holders.

“However, in leveraging the power and reach of networks, the environments created are often poorly designed, overly complex, and generally cumbersome to a user. For example, in certain instances, the environments are modeled to mimic traditional in-person brick and mortar experiences, leading to sub-optimal experiences. Moreover, the next generation (and even some of the current generation) of prospective policy holders typically use the Internet in a significantly different manner (e.g., to communicate using social media, for entertainment such as applications, video games, etc., and the like) than traditional in-person communication (e.g., conventional brick and mortar establishments). Accordingly, such environments often fail to relate to or otherwise engage various policy holders.

“Although attempts have been made to date to attract potential policy holders, a need still remains for techniques that dynamically engage both existing policy holders and prospective policy holders, and also educate young, inexperienced prospective policy holders who have limited insight or interest in relevant insurance products.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent: “The present disclosure provides dynamically engaging environments and relatable interfaces and visualizations to solicit interaction from users such as prospective and existing policy holders. Such techniques are particularly adapted to gamify insurance based services for video gameplay.

“According to one embodiment of the subject disclosure, a risk management or insurance provider server solicits interaction from a user. Interaction identifying a real property can be solicited, for example, during game play of a video game by user prompts, popup windows, secret interactive elements in a video game, and the like. Further, the insurance provider generates a virtual environment gaming landscape which constitutes a virtual representation of the identified real property. The interaction with the virtual environment gaming landscape preferably solicits additional information from the user regarding the identified real property. Based on user’s interaction with the virtual environment gaming landscape in conjunction with additional public and industry data sources (e.g. actuarial estimates of catastrophe risk given a particular geography), a risk assessment related to the identified real property is performed. Further, based on the performed risk assessment, the insurance provider offers a recommendation regarding one or more insurance-related services.

“These and other features of the systems and methods of the subject invention will become more readily apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments taken in conjunction with the drawings.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“What is claimed is:

“1. A method for providing information related to insurance services, the method comprising: receiving user input identifying a real property; generating, by a processor, a virtual environment gaming landscape on a display comprising a virtual representation of a geo-spatial floor layout corresponding to the identified real property; soliciting, by the processor, interaction on the display from the user with the virtual environment gaming landscape; performing, by the processor, a risk assessment related to the identified real property based on user’s interaction with the virtual environment gaming landscape; and providing, by the processor, a recommendation regarding one or more services based on the performed risk assessment.

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of generating a virtual environment gaming landscape further comprises obtaining, by the processor, data for the identified real property from a third party.

“3. The method of claim 1, wherein the virtual environment gaming landscape further comprises a plurality of avatars and a plurality of objects capable of being interacted with the plurality of avatars and wherein the user is represented by an avatar in the virtual environment gaming landscape.

“4. The method of claim 1, wherein the virtual environment gaming landscape enables the user to modify the virtual representation of geo-spatial floor layout corresponding to the identified real property.

“5. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of objects represent a plurality of personal property objects associated with the identified real property.

“6. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more services includes at least one of homeowner’s insurance services, renter’s insurance services, personal automobile insurance services, umbrella liability insurance services, valuable personal property insurance services, boat insurance services and snowmobile insurance services.

“7. The method of claim 6, further comprising providing, by the processor, an educational tutorial to the user regarding the one or more recommended services within the virtual environment gaming landscape.

“8. The method of claim 5, wherein the plurality of personal property objects comprise a plurality of household appliances and wherein the provided recommendation is related to energy efficiency and conservation.

“9. A computer system for providing information related to insurance services, comprising: a memory configured to store instructions; a processor disposed in communication with the memory, wherein the processor upon execution of the instructions is configured to: receive user input identifying a real property; generate a virtual environment gaming landscape on a display comprising a virtual representation of a geo-spatial floor layout corresponding to the identified real property; solicit interaction from the user on the display with the virtual environment gaming landscape; perform a risk assessment related to the identified real property based on user’s interaction with the virtual environment gaming landscape; and provide a recommendation regarding one or more services based on the performed risk assessment.

“10. The computer system as recited in claim 9, wherein performing a risk assessment includes analysis of the user input to determine mitigatable items situated in the vicinity of the identified real property such that the mitigatable items can be removed or modified to reduce a risk of natural hazards associated with the identified real property.

“11. The computer system as recited in claim 9, wherein the virtual environment gaming landscape comprises a plurality of avatars and a plurality of objects capable of being interacted with the plurality of avatars and wherein the user is represented by an avatar in the virtual environment gaming landscape.

“12. The computer system as recited in claim 9, wherein the processor is further configured to provide an educational tutorial to the user regarding the one or more recommended services within the virtual environment gaming landscape and configured to determine user’s completion progress with respect to the provided educational tutorial.

“13. The computer system as recited in claim 10, wherein performing a risk assessment further includes analysis of the user input to determine monetary values of a plurality of characteristics associated with the identified real property and wherein the plurality of characteristics are indicative of the identified real property’s overall monetary value.”

For more information, see this patent: Howard, Christopher. Gamification Of Renter’S/Homeowner’S Insurance Products. U.S. Patent Number 10,262,375, filed July 13, 2016, and published online on April 29, 2019. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=10,262,375.PN.&OS=PN/10,262,375RS=PN/10,262,375

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