Researchers Submit Patent Application, “Determining Body Characteristics Based on Images”, for Approval (USPTO 20230316416): Allstate Insurance Company

2023 OCT 25 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Washington, D.C., NewsRx journalists report that a patent application by the inventor Rugel, John (Hawthorn Woods, IL, US), filed on June 6, 2023, was made available online on October 5, 2023.

The patent’s assignee is Allstate Insurance Company (Northbrook, Illinois, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Life insurance is not only an important financial tool and investment strategy for many customers, but also provides customers with the security and peace of mind of knowing that they are protecting the financial futures of their families and loved-ones. Many different types of life insurance policies may exist between insurance providers (or insurers) and customers (or insureds), such as term life insurance (providing life insurance protection over a specific period of time), whole life insurance (providing permanent insurance for the lifetime of the insured, generally with fixed terms), or universal life insurance (similar to whole life insurance, with additional flexibility to allow customers to raise or lower premiums and coverage amounts during the lifetime of their policies). Different insurance providers may offer various different types of life insurance products, including different insurance types, terms, premiums, and coverage amounts, to meet the needs and investment goals of different customers.

“Insurance providers may determine eligibility of different customers for different life insurance policies and terms (e.g., types, premiums, coverage amounts, term durations, investment flexibility, tax status, etc.), and may offer different policies and terms to different customers, based on various customer information, such as age, gender, income, health, and risk factors. In order to select appropriate life insurance policies and terms for customers, and to determine what policies and terms that different customers may be eligible for, insurance providers may ask customers to provide information related to their current height and weight. This information may be used to determine one or more risk factors associated with the user.

“Conventional systems may require verification of the height and weight provided by the user. This verification may include requiring the user to visit an insurance agent, physician’s office, or other third party vendor, who may collect this information to verify the information provided by the user. This may be costly and inefficient.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent application, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent application: “The following presents a simplified summary in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the disclosure. The summary is not an extensive overview of the disclosure. It is neither intended to identify key or critical elements of the disclosure nor to delineate the scope of the disclosure. The following summary merely presents some concepts of the disclosure in a simplified form as a prelude to the description below.

“Aspects of the disclosure relate to systems, apparatuses, computer-implemented methods, and computer-readable media executable by insurance system servers and user computing devices for receiving requests for insurance products. In some examples, the insurance product may include a life insurance policy. In order to determine one or more factors of the insurance product or policy, the system may use body characteristics of the customer or potential customer, such as height, weight, body mass index, and the like. In some examples, this information may be determined from one or more images provided by the user. For instance, the system may generate instructions that are transmitted to the user providing information regarding types of images to capture, number of images, and the like. The user may capture the images and transmit them to the system for processing. Based on the received images, the system may determine various body characteristics of the user and may use that information to determine one or more policy factors for the insurance product or policy, such as premium, coverage, term, type of policy, or the like.

“Other features and advantages of the disclosure will be apparent from the additional description provided herein.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A system comprising: at least one processor; a communication interface communicatively coupled to the at least one processor; and a memory storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause a user computing device to: transmit a request for an insurance product to an insurance system server; capture at least one image of a customer or potential customer and an object having a known size; convert the captured at least one image to a silhouette of the customer or potential customer; transmit the converted, captured at least one image to the insurance system server for determination of a height and a weight of the customer or potential customer determined from the at least one image; and receive, responsive to the transmitting, an insurance policy factor based, at least in part, on the height and the weight of the customer or potential customer determined from the at least one image.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the object having a known size is at least one of: a door frame, a door and a vehicle.

“3. The system of claim 1, wherein the insurance policy factor is further based on a body mass index of the customer or potential customer.

“4. The system of claim 1, wherein a verification of an identity of the customer or potential customer further includes: receiving a captured image of a government issued identification; and verifying the identity of the customer or potential customer by comparing the captured image of the government issued identification to additional information.

“5. The system of claim 1, wherein in order to capture the at least one image, the instructions further cause the user computing device to capture a plurality of images of the customer or potential customer and at least one of: body part to capture in at least one image, angle of capture of at least one image, and environment in which at least one image is captured.

“6. The system of claim 5, wherein the body part to capture includes at least one of a full body image, a side image, and a head or face image.

“7. The system of claim 1, further comprising instructions that, when executed, cause the user computing device to: encode the at least one image to generate encoded information derived from the at least one image.

“8. The system of claim 7, further comprising instructions that, when executed, cause the user computing device to: store the encoded information derived from the at least one image and not store the at least one image.

“9. A method, comprising: receiving, a request for an insurance product; requesting capture of the at least one image of the customer or potential customer, wherein the at least one image includes the customer or potential customer and an object having a known size; receiving the at least one image of the customer or potential customer; converting the received at least one image to a silhouette of the customer or potential customer; analyzing the converted at least one image to determine a height and a weight of the customer or potential customer based on the at least one image; and determining, based, at least in part, on the determined height and weight, an insurance policy factor for the requested insurance product.

“10. The method of claim 9, wherein the request for the insurance product is received from a user computing device of the customer or potential customer and wherein the user computing device of the customer or potential customer is used to capture the at least one image.

“11. The method of claim 9, wherein the object having a known size is at least one of: a door frame, a door and a vehicle.

“12. The method of claim 9, further comprising: determining, based on the height and weight determined from the at least one image, a body mass index of the customer or potential customer; and determining the insurance policy factor based, at least in part, on the determined body mass index.

“13. The method of claim 9, further comprising verifying the identity of the customer or potential customer including: receiving a captured image of a government issued identification; and verifying the identity of the customer or potential customer by comparing the captured image of the government issued identification to additional information.

“14. The method of claim 9, wherein requesting capture of the at least one image of the customer or potential customer includes requesting capture a plurality of images of the customer or potential customer and at least one of: body part to capture in at least one image, angle of capture of at least one image, and environment in which at least one image is captured.

“15. The method of claim 14, wherein the body part to capture includes at least one of a full body image, a side image, and a head or face image.

“16. The method of claim 9, further comprising: encoding the received at least one image.

“17. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by an insurance system server comprising at least one processor, memory, and a communication interface, cause the insurance system server to: receive a request for an insurance product; transmit, to a user computing device of the customer or potential customer, a request to capture the at least one image of the customer or potential customer, wherein the least one image includes the customer or potential customer and an object having a known size; receive, from the user computing device, the at least one image of the customer or potential customer; convert the received at least one image of the customer or potential customer to a silhouette of the customer or potential customer; process the at least one image to determine a height and a weight of the customer or potential customer from the at least one image; and determine, based on the height and the weight of the customer or potential customer, an insurance policy factor of the requested insurance product.

“18. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 17, further comprising instructions that, when executed, cause the insurance system server to: determine, based on the height and weight determined from the at least one image, a body mass index of the customer or potential customer; and determine the insurance policy factor based, at least in part, on the determined body mass index.

“19. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 17, wherein the insurance policy factor includes a premium of the insurance product.

“20. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 17, wherein the object having a known size is at least one of: a door frame, a door, and a vehicle.”

For additional information on this patent application, see: Rugel, John. Determining Body Characteristics Based on Images. U.S. Patent Application Number 20230316416, filed June 6, 2023 and posted October 5, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(20230316416)&db=US-PGPUB&type=ids

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