Patent Issued for Using Images And Voice Recordings To Facilitate Underwriting Life Insurance (USPTO 10,825,095)

2020 NOV 12 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Bernico, Michael L. (Bloomington, IL); Myers, Jeffrey (Normal, IL), filed on September 15, 2016, was published online on November 16, 2020.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 10,825,095 is State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (Bloomington, Illinois, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “The nature of the underwriting process for life insurance includes a number of factors which limit the ability to sell policies online. For example, some providers may require collecting samples of bodily fluids to assess an applicant’s health status. Furthermore, even providers who do not require such samples are at risk of receiving fraudulent answers to personal and/or health-related questions, such as the applicant falsely claiming to be a non-smoker. Prior attempts to solve these problems include not selling high-benefit policies online, proxying the desired medical information with advanced statistical techniques using data from other sources, and pricing potential fraud into future policies.

“Also, machine vision techniques have been employed to extract health-related information from images of people. For example, one machine vision platform is able to diagnose certain medical conditions based upon analyses of images from diagnostic imaging tools, such as an X-ray, a CT scan, and/or an MRI scan. The computer’s diagnoses may even be able to identify certain conditions at earlier stages than doctors could identify them in some situations.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “Embodiments of the present technology relate to systems and methods for analyzing still and/or moving (i.e., video) images and/or voice recordings of applicants as part of an underwriting process to determine appropriate life insurance premiums and/or other terms of coverage.

“In a first aspect, a system for evaluating an insurance applicant as part of an underwriting process to determine one or more appropriate terms of insurance coverage may broadly comprise a communication element and a processing element. The communication element may be configured to receive an image of the insurance applicant. The processing element may be trained to probablistically correlate an aspect of appearance with a personal and/or health-related characteristic by being provided with a database of images of individuals having known personal and/or health-related characteristics. The trained processing element may be configured to analyze the image of the insurance applicant to probablistically determine the personal and/or health-related characteristic for the insurance applicant, and to suggest the appropriate term of insurance coverage based at least in part on the probablistically determined personal and/or health-related characteristic. The system may include more, fewer, or alternative components, including those discussed elsewhere herein.

“In another aspect, a computer-implemented method for evaluating an insurance applicant as part of an underwriting process to determine one or more appropriate terms of insurance coverage may be provided. The method may include training a processing element to probablistically correlate an aspect of appearance with a personal and/or health-related characteristic by providing the processing element with a database of images of individuals having known personal or health-related characteristics. The method may include receiving with a communication element an image of the insurance applicant; analyzing the image of the insurance applicant with the trained processing element to probablistically determine the personal and/or health-related characteristic for the insurance applicant; and/or suggesting with the processing element the one or more appropriate terms of insurance coverage based at least in part on the probablistically determined personal and/or health-related characteristic. The computer-implemented method may include more, fewer, or alternative actions, including those discussed elsewhere herein.

“In another aspect, a non-transitory computer-readable medium with an executable program stored thereon for evaluating an insurance applicant as part of an underwriting process to determine one or more appropriate terms of insurance coverage may broadly instruct a system (that includes a communication element and a processing element) to perform the following actions. The processing element may be trained to probablistically correlate an aspect of appearance with a personal and/or health-related characteristic by providing the processing element with a database of images of individuals having known personal or health-related characteristics. The communication element may be instructed to receive an image of the insurance applicant. The trained processing element may be instructed to analyze the image of the insurance applicant to probablistically determine the personal and/or health-related characteristic for the insurance applicant, and instructed to suggest the one or more appropriate terms of insurance coverage based at least in part on the probablistically determined personal and/or health-related characteristic. The non-transitory computer-readable medium with an executable program stored thereon may include more, fewer, or alternative instructions, including those discussed elsewhere herein.

“Various implementations of any or all of the foregoing aspects may include any one or more of the following additional features. The insurance coverage may be life insurance coverage, and the one or more appropriate terms of insurance coverage may include an insurance premium. The image of the insurance applicant may be a digital, analog, still, or moving (i.e., video) image, and the image may be an otherwise non-diagnostic conventional image, such as a ‘selfie’ taken by the insurance applicant. The processing element may be trained using supervised or unsupervised machine learning, and may employ a neural network, which may be a convolutional neural network or a deep learning neural network. The personal and/or health-related characteristic may be, for example, any one more of age, sex, weight, height, ethnicity, lifespan, cause of death, tobacco use, alcohol use, drug use, diet, and existing medical conditions, and/or risk factors for future medical conditions.

“The communication element may be further configured to receive a voice recording of the insurance applicant. The processing element may be further trained to probablistically correlate an aspect of voice with the personal and/or health-related characteristic by being provided with a database of voice recordings of individuals having the known personal and/or health related characteristics. The processing element may be further configured to analyze the voice recording of the insurance applicant to probablistically determine the personal and/or health-related characteristic for the insurance applicant, and to suggest the appropriate term of insurance coverage based at least in part on the probablistically determined personal and/or health-related characteristic.

“The processing element may be further configured to use the probablistically determined personal and/or health-related characteristic to verify information provided by the insurance applicant. The processing element may be further configured to use the probablistically determined personal and/or health-related characteristic to wholly or at least partially automatically determine the one or more appropriate terms of coverage.

“Advantages of these and other embodiments will become more apparent to those skilled in the art from the following description of the exemplary embodiments which have been shown and described by way of illustration. As will be realized, the present embodiments described herein may be capable of other and different embodiments, and their details are capable of modification in various respects. Accordingly, the drawings and description are to be regarded as illustrative in nature and not as restrictive.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“We claim:

“1. A system for evaluating an insurance applicant as part of an underwriting process to determine one or more terms of insurance coverage, the system comprising: a data receiving circuit configured to receive moving image and audio data of the insurance applicant; and a processor comprising an electronic circuit-- trained to correlate aspects of appearance and voice with a personal and/or health-related characteristic by being provided with a database of moving image and audio data of individuals having known personal and/or health-related characteristics, and configured to analyze the moving image and audio data of the insurance applicant to determine the personal and/or health-related characteristic for the insurance applicant, and to suggest a term of insurance coverage based at least in part on the determined personal and/or health-related characteristic.

“2. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the insurance coverage is life insurance coverage.

“3. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the term of insurance coverage includes an insurance premium or discount.

“4. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the moving image data of the insurance applicant includes a digital image.

“5. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the moving image data of the insurance applicant includes an analog image.

“6. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the processor is further-- trained to correlate aspects of appearance with the personal and/or health-related characteristic by being provided with additional data of the database comprising still image data of individuals having the known personal and/or health-related characteristics, configured to determine the personal and/or health-related characteristic for the insurance applicant in part by analyzing a still image of the insurance applicant.

“7. The system as set forth in claim 6, wherein the still image of the insurance applicant is an otherwise non-diagnostic conventional image.

“8. The system as set forth in claim 7, wherein the still image of the insurance applicant is a selfie taken by the insurance applicant.

“9. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the processor is trained using supervised machine learning.

“10. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein training the processor is trained using unsupervised machine learning.

“11. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the processor employs a neural network.

“12. The system as set forth in claim 11, wherein the neural network is a convolutional neural network.

“13. The system as set forth in claim 11, wherein the neural network is a deep learning neural network.

“14. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the personal and/or health-related characteristic is selected from the group consisting of: age, sex, weight, height, ethnicity, lifespan, cause of death, tobacco use, alcohol use, drug use, diet, and existing medical conditions, risk factors for future medical conditions.

“15. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured to use the determined personal and/or health-related characteristic to verify information provided by the insurance applicant.

“16. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured to use the determined personal and/or health-related characteristic to substantially automatically determine the term of coverage.

“17. A system for evaluating an insurance applicant as part of an underwriting process to determine a life insurance premium, the system comprising: a data receiving circuit configured to receive otherwise non-diagnostic conventional moving image and audio data of the insurance applicant; and a processor comprising an electronic circuit employing a neural network and-- trained to correlate one or more aspects of appearance and/or voice with a personal and/or health-related characteristic by being provided with a database of otherwise non-diagnostic conventional moving image and audio data of individuals having known personal and/or health-related characteristics, and configured to analyze the otherwise non-diagnostic conventional moving image and audio data of the insurance applicant to determine the personal and/or health-related characteristic for the insurance applicant, to use the determined personal and/or health-related characteristic to verify information provided by the insurance applicant, and to substantially automatically determine the life insurance premium based at least in part on the determined personal and/or health-related characteristic.”

For additional information on this patent, see: Bernico, Michael L.; Myers, Jeffrey. Using Images And Voice Recordings To Facilitate Underwriting Life Insurance. U.S. Patent Number 10,825,095, filed September 15, 2016, and published online on November 16, 2020. 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=10,825,095.PN.&OS=PN/10,825,095RS=PN/10,825,095

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