The Implications of Insurance Adjusters Use of Drones

Insurers perform property inspections in connection with underwriting to determine if the property meets their standards for issuing coverage, and to determine the appropriate premium classification. Insurers inspect damaged property to evaluate the extent of the damage, whether the damage resulted from a covered cause of loss and to estimate the cost to repair or replace the insured property. In the future, inspections of buildings and other insured property by insurers may be done through still photos, videos or data from more sophisticated sensors obtained by an unmanned aircraft. Rather than having inspections done by a person peering up from the ground, on a ladder or walking through a field, the inspections will be done by a person looking at photos taken by a drone or reviewing a computer analysis of data collected through drone-mounted sensors.