Market interest came without solicitation
Flyreel’s entry into the mortgage technology market was in some ways a happy accident.
The Denver-based technology company uses computer vision and machine learning technology, via an app, to help evaluate residential and commercial property for P/C insurance carriers. Flyreel had envisioned exploring the mortgage market within a few years, but its app began to draw attention on its own in the real estate market earlier in 2021.
“Our insurance [product] caught the eyes of folks in real estate and now we’ve had pull into that market and have experimented a bit with a number of [related] groups,” explained Flyreel founder and CEO Cole Winans (pictured).
Flyreel believes its technology will have multiple uses in the real estate and mortgage industries, Winans said. Among the viable clients: iBuyers, or folks that buy up homes, mostly remotely at scale and then flip and sell them for a profit. The appraisal side of things also offers potential by improving on automation valuation models – a service that provides real estate property valuations using mathematical modeling combined with data, Winans noted.
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“These models have done a nice job to date [but] they don’t have the luxury of taking in ground level data – property condition and more to inform the most accurate valuations of that home,” Winans said. “That’s an area where we’re also able to provide considerable value.”
Insurance beginnings
Flyreel’s origins go back to 2013, though it officially launched its signature product for the insurance industry in 2018 – an AI assistant that can help guide policyholders through a property inspection.
The company and its approximately 45 employees have raised $18 million to date, with investors including Gradient Ventures – Google’s AI-focused venture fund, Guidewire Software and State Auto Labs, among others. Most of its business involves surveying the inside of residential homes but it also handles commercial properties as well.
Flyreel’s centerpiece is a downloadable mobile app that anyone who has been invited to do a property scan can download. Once activated, users put in a code and then a chatbot engages in a conversation with them, walking them through the inspection process.
“It will say, ‘Let’s go into the kitchen. I am going to turn on your camera. Pan across the kitchen from left to right,’” Winans described. “The beauty is, as you do that, we’ve developed very advanced computer vision models that are analyzing the video and the images you’re taking of the property, automatically identifying their features, the material risks, hazards and more across the property.”
The benefit of the technology is that someone untrained can use it successfully, Winans said, guided by a chatbot to capture data, with computer vision models then analyzing the data to automatically extract useful information for insurance or real-estate related business decisions.
On the insurance side, carriers themselves are customers, with the homeowner being the target user because he or she would take the place of a professional that would traditionally come and do a property inspection.
On the real estate side, lenders are the customer target, with the technology supplanting the widely used “drive-by” inspection which only provides a broad assessment of the property and nothing of its interior condition.
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“The value of a [product] like ours is that anyone can go out and become a property expert on behalf of a real estate buyer, a real estate seller or a real estate lender,” Winans said.
Competition or complementary?
Flyreel isn’t the only tech company of its kind, of course. Among others, there’s also Arturo. Spun out of American Family Insurance, it generates property-focused AI-driven analytics for insurers. The company has primarily focused on residential properties but recently expanded to provide analysis for commercial structures as well. Company CEO John-Isaac Clark recently told Mortgage Professional America that his company is also turning to the mortgage industry as it continues to expand.
Winans said there is room enough for both companies.
“We’re actually pretty friendly,” Winans said. “Where we’re complementary is: Arturo is world class at analyzing the roofs and we’re world class at analyzing the interior as well as the ground-level exterior.”
Winans said businesses in both sectors have asked both companies to work together in some cases and provide a “top down, inside out” understanding of a home without needing to send an inspector to analyze the property.
Starting small
Flyreel’s mortgage and real estate-related business is “just getting started,” Winans said, but he envisions it becoming a much larger part of the company’s operations further down the line.
“It could rival our insurance business and seeing a more equal split amongst [both segments] over the next few years would not be a surprise, given the interest we’ve received and the opportunities we’ve now defined,” Winans said. “I would expect a lot more balance over time over the next few years.”
