Hummingbird Technologies fly drones safer and smarter, thanks to Flock

Hum­ming­bird Tech­nolo­gies has revealed how it is work­ing along­side Flock to align its drone insur­ance costs while increas­ing safe­ty stan­dards.

The fast-grow­ing tech com­pa­ny uses satel­lite and drone imagery to help farm­ers and agri­cul­tur­al com­pa­nies increase yields and due to the nature of its work, it does­n’t oper­ate all-year-round.

Flight plans change con­stant­ly and are dri­ven by the whims of the weath­er and demands of cus­tomers. Hum­ming­bird need­ed an insur­ance part­ner that under­stood how drones were being used in the agri­cul­ture indus­try and the real risks it was exposed to. 

In a busi­ness as dynam­ic and com­pet­i­tive as theirs, any oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy would help ben­e­fit their busi­ness. And they now have a cen­tralised way to under­stand risk. 

Ben Smith, Head of UK Oper­a­tions at Hum­ming­bird Tech­nolo­gies, said: “Our old drone insur­ance pol­i­cy was very rigid, it took a long time to change if we bought a new drone or if we had a change of licence — which did­n’t fit our very quick busi­ness mod­el.

“Flock­’s drone insur­ance pol­i­cy ben­e­fits us because its allowed us to be more flex­i­ble, and not wor­ry about how much how we’re spend­ing. Before, we would be real­ly con­cerned if we were pay­ing super-high pre­mi­ums in Jan­u­ary and Decem­ber, when we would have two to three flights a month, and in July when we did 200.”

By analysing thou­sands of hours of flight data, Flock­’s enter­prise pol­i­cy is data-dri­ven so it’s com­plete­ly tai­lored to a cus­tomer’s needs. This means Hum­ming­bird Tech­nolo­gies can eas­i­ly amend their pol­i­cy through­out their dura­tion, with lia­bil­i­ty lim­its and named pilots also con­trolled by them.

In months where few­er oper­a­tions take place, Hum­ming­bird Tech­nolo­gies can now opti­mise their bud­get to oth­er areas of the busi­ness. There’s no admin and as their oper­a­tions grow, their insur­ance pol­i­cy grows with them.