Varon Vehicles’ think tank explores the insurance perspective in Urban Air Mobility

Anoth­er key top­ic in the indus­try, but one that is rarely addressed, was the main talk­ing point for Varon Vehi­cles’ sixth think tank about the imple­men­ta­tion of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty in Latin Amer­i­ca.

Enti­tled ‘Inno­va­tions in Insur­ance’, it took place last Fri­day and fea­tured Ale­jan­dro Oli­er, Mobil­i­ty Port­fo­lio Man­ag­er at SURA — an insur­ance com­pa­ny based in Colom­bia, Lore­na Rios, Direc­tor of Mobil­i­ty Solu­tions for Suramer­i­cana in the Latin Amer­i­ca region, and JR Ham­mond, CEO and Founder of Cana­di­an Air Mobil­i­ty.

Also tak­ing part was Jean Claude Bessu­do, Pres­i­dent of Colom­bian trav­el agency Aviatur and Pres­i­dent of the Board of Direc­tors of the Colom­bian asso­ci­a­tion of trav­el and tourism, Ana­to, and Andrew Carter, Co-Founder, Pres­i­dent and CTO of Resilienx.

Top­ics dis­cussed in the one-hour ses­sion includ­ed Cre­ation of New Insur­ance Prod­ucts and Ser­vices, Expe­ri­ence from Heli­copter Ser­vices, Cov­er­age: Air Vehi­cles, Ver­ti­ports, Oper­a­tors, Users, Third Par­ty & Non-Users Cov­er­age, Role in Com­mu­ni­ty Accep­tance and Safe­ty Per­cep­tion.

Intro­duc­ing the think tank, Felipe Varon, CEO and Founder of Varon Vehi­cles, said: “Insur­ance is rarely a sub­ject that is addressed when we talk about Urban Air Mobil­i­ty and it is most­ly seen as a oper­a­tive part of the oper­a­tion. But it turns out that it may very well be an instru­men­tal for what is arguably the Holy Grail of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty and it is pub­lic accep­tance.

“Pub­lic accep­tance not only refers to in gen­er­al to the even­tu­al poten­tial cus­tomers that we may have as users as our air taxis oper­a­tions, but it involves a much broad­er spec­trum like accep­tance by aero­nau­tic author­i­ties, city author­i­ties, local gov­ern­ments and gen­er­al gov­ern­ments as well.

“As we strive to shape the future of our cities, it is very impor­tant that we tack­le accep­tance in the best way pos­si­ble in order to imple­ment our sys­tems. We are try­ing to tack­le these very inter­est­ing points about the inno­va­tion we need to approach in insur­ance.”

Varon asked the pan­el about their views on the lat­est insur­ance prod­ucts and ser­vices that are required for Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, and Carter began by giv­ing a tech­ni­cal approach:

“What we are real­ly look­ing at is more of how do we ensure the safe­ty of the ecosys­tem, and that can plays direct­ly into the insur­ance, because the insur­ance is basi­cal­ly some­body under­writ­ing that the safe­ty is there which plays into the pub­lic accep­tance.

“The pub­lic wants to know and under­stand that some­body has under­writ­ten the safe­ty ele­ment and that there is some­one some­where who says it is safe to put their stamp of approval on it — that they do not have to wor­ry about the things that are buzzing over their head.

“We back­track that down to the tech­nol­o­gy lev­el and what we look at is how do we assure the safe­ty of that ecosys­tem? How do we mon­i­tor the health integri­ty of the data and sys­tem and make up the ecosys­tem, and with the ser­vice providers pro­vid­ing their ser­vices to air plat­forms and ver­ti­ports, how do we make sure it is all run­ning smooth­ly? It goes back to safe­ty.”

Oli­er gave his per­spec­tive on the new insur­ance prod­ucts, and also his thoughts on how an insur­ance com­pa­ny has been instru­men­tal in help­ing the indus­try to achieve pub­lic accep­tance.

“It is impor­tant to con­nect there are many dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers that enable this type of trust and as men­tioned, this sen­sa­tion and per­cep­tion of safe­ty around this type of ser­vice. We speak about some­thing that would seem like sci­ence fic­tion, under the com­mon view to think that an air­craft could be float­ing over us, but we start with some­thing that already exists in our indus­try.

“What I’m say­ing is that the insur­ance indus­try in this case can par­tic­i­pate by start­ing to decide these type of prod­ucts that already exist, such as civ­il lia­bil­i­ty, and the dam­age that could be caused dur­ing a route, and also the pro­tec­tion of the sys­tem itself.

“It is also very impor­tant as you say that the trust with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, not just the users who might be direct­ly exposed but all of those who will be liv­ing around where the infra­struc­ture is locat­ed, need to be invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in this basis for insur­ance because it is them who could also be involved.

“But let’s not think about it from a neg­a­tive stand­point, but on the phys­i­cal and social devel­op­ments that take place, so insur­ance prod­ucts from the pro­tec­tion of the user, providers as well as the dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties that are part and around our fun­da­men­tal part for the devel­op­ment of new prod­ucts that as an insur­ance com­pa­ny, we should be aim­ing to as well.”

Adding to this point, Bessu­do said: “I believe that the insur­ance and the insur­ance com­po­nent is the eas­i­est one of every­thing you’re doing; autho­ri­sa­tion of routes, def­i­n­i­tion, oper­a­tion areas, avi­a­tion per­mits etc.

“A cer­ti­fied vehi­cle by the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) by the inter­na­tion­al author­i­ties becomes just a day-to-day issue for an insur­ance com­pa­ny, once it’s not an exper­i­men­tal vehi­cle any­more with all the expe­ri­ence around the world, with heli­copters, air­planes. The eas­i­est part of what you’re doing is insur­ance side.

Rios agreed with this and giv­ing her per­spec­tive, added: “In this par­tic­u­lar case, we need to have a broad view and see beyond the tra­di­tion­al approach that has been pro­vid­ed. We all know that his­tor­i­cal­ly, insur­ance has played and will play an impor­tant role on enabling the devel­op­ment of new indus­tries and new busi­ness­es.

“I believe the insur­ance com­pa­nies have a con­no­ta­tion that is not too close to peo­ple, for its clear and it turns out that the evi­dent part of the insur­ance should play an exist­ing role for this indus­try, Urban Air Mobil­i­ty, OEMs, oper­a­tors, port and infra­struc­ture. That most like­ly will be cov­er­age that is close to what we do when we insure any type of arti­fact or sys­tem.

“The oth­er per­spec­tive that we believe needs to be pro­vid­ed, and this is part of what we have been work­ing on in our busi­ness devel­op­ment is to not lose sight that at the end of the day, those that are going to be hop­ing in these air­craft are peo­ple like us, and part of gen­er­at­ing that trust and the role the insur­ance com­pa­ny should play, should be linked to the uncer­tain­ties that these peo­ple feel, and these uncer­tain­ties are also linked to knowl­edge.”

Ham­mond is lead­ing the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem in Cana­da, and has expe­ri­ence in the oper­a­tion of heli­copters. Con­tin­u­ing on from Lore­na’s point, he said: “Approx­i­ma­tion of where we need to get to in the next stage of urban air mobil­i­ty, but where we are try­ing to expand to as well is on that advanced air mobil­i­ty umbrel­la that includes the urban aspect but crit­i­cal­ly as well, the region­al side.

“The key point I want to bring out that is data aspect. We’re very priv­i­leged on the Van­cou­ver side with one of the largest sched­uled heli­copter providers, Heli­jet, in down­town Van­cou­ver, in con­junc­tion with our flow plane oper­a­tors that have giv­ing and lean­ing into 38 years plus of data that we can start min­ing and adapt­ing in devel­op­ing these new prod­ucts that can play in this advanced air mobil­i­ty space.

“And that in con­junc­tion gives us a start­ing point to build upon for the new intro­duc­tion of tech­nolo­gies, infra­struc­ture oppor­tu­ni­ties and ensur­ing that that safe­ty stan­dard that we have with­in the avi­a­tion indus­try is not only main­tained but with a goal to con­tin­ue to improve upon there.”

The next think tank, which will talk about the Val­ue of Latin Amer­i­ca for Air Vehi­cle OEMs, will take place tomor­row (Thurs­day) from 12noon to 1pm EDT.

To watch this dis­cus­sion and the rest of the pre­vi­ous think tanks, vis­it www.varonvehicles.com/skyscraper.