mpartial Creates Timely, Accurate Repair Estimates for Faster and Fairer Claims Settlement

Natural disasters aren’t new, but restoration companies are working in brand-new and even cutting-edge ways to accelerate the reconstruction and repair of properties damaged by floods, earthquakes, windstorms, and fires. The rise of smartphones and even more advanced digital technologies are increasing both the ability and the pressure to modernize. 

Enter the remote estimating engine by California-based mpartial, a Matterport Platform Partner. mpartial builds upon Matterport technology—digital twins, an API, an SDK, and TruePlan—to produce accurate property restoration estimates for software called Xactimate. Ultimately, mpartial helps contractors generate repair estimates for more rapid approvals from insurance carriers while relieving burdensome administrative processes. Each mpartial repair estimate is produced with objective accuracy, using immersive 3D imagery and precise physical and geospatial measurements. The company has almost doubled its growth since early 2020.

mpartialMbed capabilities allow users to add important information to digital twins with mpartial Mattertags by key categories, as well as create PDF reports by category for records compliance.

An Estimating Engine Built with Matterport Technology

Matterport can create a digital twin of any property by capturing everything both inside and outside in 3D at 4k resolution. And it automatically measures everything the camera sees with millimeter accuracy. 

Joe Argollo, Vice President of mpartial, first saw what the technology is capable of six years ago when working as a civil engineer for a restoration company that used Matterport for all its claims. “I was really impressed with the quality of the digital twins and by how much Matterport helped us avoid litigation and reduce cycle times,” he says. “When other companies started using it and Matterport became the standard within the industry, we saw the opportunity to create a platform to build on and create even more value.”

Insurance carriers require contractors to write estimates using Xactimate, a complex property claims estimation platform that includes more than 20,000 line items, each referring to a specific activity that occurs on a work site. “Mastering Xactimate takes years,” Argollo says, “and most restorers and claims professionals are too busy with mundane and repetitive work. mpartial does 80 percent of the heavy lifting and automates these repetitive tasks, giving restorers and claims professionals the time they need to focus on their customers, the policyholders.”

Contractors also face challenges beyond mastering Xactimate. Damaged properties are often several hours away from the office, so estimators spend days at a time commuting back and forth. Once on site, they had to take thousands of photographs and draw manual sketches, which often took another couple of days. 

Capturing Properties Completely and Accurately

Using Matterport to capture properties helps contractors work more efficiently. Digital twins capture properties completely and accurately, eliminating the need for repeat trips to a site if a contractor forgets to take a photo of a wall or a cabinet. Contractors who use Matterport TruePlan no longer need to manually draw property sketches because those can be automatically generated from digital twins with a single click. Argollo estimates that a contractor who uses Matterport can cut the amount of time required to document a standard restoration job from two days to a few hours. 

The company’s flagship offering is a remote estimating tool called mpartialScope that extracts the relevant data embedded in pre-mitigation and post-mitigation scans to render an Xactimate scope, helping contractors win more work and enabling insurance carriers to approve claims faster and earlier in the settlement process.

The mpartial engine can generate repair estimates 25 percent faster than using manual methods, according to Argollo. However, it’s not just the speed that’s important—using Matterport and mpartial significantly improves accuracy. 

“I don't think it's fair when people do a lot of work and leave a lot of money on the table because they weren't able to document everything or they forgot to take a picture of that one room in the corner and didn’t estimate it,” Argollo says. “With Matterport, you're going to document everything 100 percent of the time.”

Users can easily upload PDF, JPEG, PNG, ESX, and SKX files, creating a unified record of supporting documentation. 

Time-stamped Mattertags help mitigate risk of fraud and abuse.

Faster Estimates with Automated Object Recognition

In the early days, mpartial teams manually wrote estimates based on Matterport digital twins. Later, Matterport developer tools allowed them to speed up the process. After contractors capture a site with Matterport, they can upload the digital twins to the mpartial portal. The mpartial engine identifies objects in the digital twin and tags Xactimate line items, then generates a fully documented Xactimate repair estimate. Each mpartial estimate explains every line item using a Matterport deep link embedded in the digital twin. 

“We focus on the objects we work with on a daily basis, like countertops and cabinets, and we integrate those with Xactimate,” Argollo says. “The tricky part is that the engine can see a cabinet, but I need to identify what type of cabinet it is. That’s the kind of thing we spend our time on. Every day the engine gets smarter and faster.”

A Single, Objective Source of Truth

mpartial clients are estimators, property owners, adjusters, and insurance carriers. All trust mpartial because it’s unbiased. “We aim to create unbiased digital assets that are beyond reproach, adding value for all interested parties simultaneously,” Argollo says. “We don't want anybody to be underpaid or overpaid.”

That single source of truth is hard to dispute. Clients use Matterport to capture properties twice, both before and after work is completed. By pre-scanning, everyone can see what a damaged property looked like before it was restored. After the mitigation work is complete, the property is scanned again. 

mpartial users can embed a pre-mitigation scan into the post-mitigation scan for easy reference.

“Contractors can’t bill for work they didn’t do because everyone can see what they did,” Argollo says. “Likewise, adjusters can’t refuse payment for completed work because it’s right there in the digital twin. In the past, between 10 and 15 percent of items were missed, but not anymore.”

Enabling Estimators and Contractors to Focus on What They Do Best

mpartial relieves its clients of administrative burdens and allows them to focus on what they do best. Contractors can outsource remote estimating instead of spending days commuting to property sites, measuring everything by hand, manually drawing sketches, snapping hundreds or even thousands of photographs, and trying to find the right line items in Xactimate. Estimators can now do almost everything from their desks and spend more time on the subjective aspects of their work—such as speaking to policyholders—and much less on the administrative side. 

“Most of the effort required to produce an estimate is mundane, repetitive, and formulaic,” Argollo says. “But with the elimination of travel time and the ability to automate 80 percent of the work, adjustors and estimators are more than tripling their productivity, giving them more time to take care of their mutual clients, the policyholders.”

One of mpartial’s happy customers is Swift Restoration. "Not only has mpartial increased our efficiency, but it has also increased the time I get to spend making our customers happy,” says Ian Hebner, Owner and Founder at Swift Restoration. “The DeepLinks within F9 notes help avoid confusion in scope and my claims get settled in half the time compared to my estimates. We have been able to take on at least 20% more workload with the use of mpartial."

Contractors who struggled to make money in the restoration industry and were chronically underpaid now have a better chance of staying in business. Companies that had a hard time finding good field estimators no longer need to rely on them as much; those that completed five to ten estimates per day can now do twenty with the same staff using mpartial. Insurance carriers no longer pay for work that wasn’t completed.

Our clients can do their jobs more easily thanks to mpartial,” Argollo says, “and we can do our jobs more easily thanks to Matterport digital twins and its SDK and API. Claims are settled faster, everybody gets paid, and policyholders get their lives back sooner.”

mpartial is a Matterport Platform Partner that leverages Matterport APIs and SDKs to build and commercialize their apps and integrations with Matterport’s market-leading spatial data platform. As a Platform Partner, they gain access to a range of commercial benefits, such as Matterport’s distribution network and enhanced support as well as co-marketing and co-selling programs to help them successfully monetize their applications. To learn more about the Platform Partner Program and apply to join, visit https://matterport.com/platform-partner-program

ABOUT MPARTIAL

mpartial is a property restoration estimating engine powered by Matterport technology. The solution enables remote estimating and adjusting with accurate Xactimate and Symbility estimates for the reconstruction of properties damaged by storms, earthquakes, fires, and floods.

https://mpartial.io

HEADQUARTERSCarlsbad, California, United States 

PRODUCTS Matterport API, Matterport SDK, Matterport TruePlan

RESULTS

• 300 percent increase in productivity

• 90 percent automation of mundane, repetitive tasks

• Reduced litigation

• Faster claims resolution