Patent Issued for Gamification of renter’s/homeowner’s insurance products (USPTO 11790456): United Services Automobile Association

2023 NOV 08 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Howard, Christopher (San Antonio, TX, US), filed on July 28, 2020, was published online on October 17, 2023, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11790456 is assigned to United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors:

“1. Field of the Invention

“The present disclosure relates to risk management services, and more particularly, to gamifying such services.

“2. Description of the Related Art

“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 the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ 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.

“A component or a feature that is common to more than one drawing is indicated with the same reference number in each of the drawings.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method for providing information related to insurance services, the method comprising: generating, by a processor, a virtual environment gaming landscape on a display comprising a virtual representation of a geo-spatial floor layout corresponding to a user’s real property, based upon gps coordinates of the user’s real property provided by the processor, having a plurality of objects representative of personal property objects associated with the user’s real property; obtaining, by the processor, data for the identified real property from real estate records relating to the user’s real property; performing, by the processor, a risk assessment related to the user’s real property based on a 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 as recited in claim 1, wherein the data for the identified real property from real estate records relating to the user’s real property is received from a third party.

“3. The method as recited in claim 1, further including providing, by the processor, demonstration of an impact caused by a natural disaster upon the geo-spatial layout of the user’s real property.

“4. The method as recited in claim 3, further including: receiving, by the processor, user input identifying a real property; and soliciting, by the processor, interaction on the display from the user with the virtual environment gaming landscape.

“5. The method as recited in 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.

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

“7. The method as recited in 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.

“8. 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: generate a virtual environment gaming landscape on a display comprising a virtual representation of a geo-spatial floor layout corresponding to a user’s real property, based upon gps coordinates of the user’s real property provided by the processor, wherein the user is enabled to modify the virtual representation of the geo-spatial floor layout; obtain data for the identified real property from real estate records relating to the user’s real property; perform a risk assessment related to the user’s real property based on a user’s interaction with the virtual environment gaming landscape; and provide a recommendation regarding one or more services based on the performed risk assessment.

“9. The system as recited in claim 8, wherein the user’s interaction with the virtual environment gaming landscape is performed during gameplay of a video game.

“10. The system as recited in claim 8, wherein the data for the identified real property from real estate records relating to the user’s real property is received from a third party.

“11. The system as recited in claim 8, wherein the processor is further configured to provide demonstration of an impact caused by a natural disaster upon the geo-spatial layout of the user’s real property.

“12. The system as recited in claim 11, wherein the processor is further configured to: receive user input identifying a real property; and solicit interaction on the display from the user with the virtual environment gaming landscape.

“13. The system as recited in claim 8, wherein the virtual environment gaming landscape further includes 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.

“14. The system as recited in claim 8, wherein the plurality of objects represent a plurality of personal property objects associated with the identified real property.

“15. The system as recited in claim 8, 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.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Howard, Christopher. Gamification of renter’s/homeowner’s insurance products. U.S. Patent Number 11790456, filed July 28, 2020, and published online on October 17, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11790456)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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