AIG makes strategic investment in workplace wearables start-up

American International Group, Inc.’s latest investment in technology meant to support data-driven approaches that help clients manage increasingly complex risks involves Human Condition Safety (HCS).

Terms of AIG’s strategic investment in HCS – an early-stage technology start-up company developing wearable devices, analytics and systems to improve worker safety – were not disclosed, the company reports in a statement Wednesday.

“AIG’s embrace of innovative, disruptive technologies is opening new ways for us to strategically partner with our clients,” Rob Schimek, CEO of AIG Commercial Insurance, comments in the statement. “In this case, the technology from HCS will help enable us to work with clients to make their worksites safer places for their employees and help reduce our clients’ overall cost of risk,” Schimek says.

In collaboration with key strategic partners, including AIG, HCS is conducting a set of pilots to demonstrate how its proprietary technology creates measureable improvements to reduce the frequency and severity of work-related injuries.

HCS’s technology – which includes wearable devices, artificial intelligence, building information modelling and cloud computing – creates an ecosystem that keeps workers safer in the industries in which they face the most physical risk, including manufacturing, energy, warehousing and distribution and construction.

AIG’s latest investment in technology follows an initial US$4 million investment with Clemson University to develop a risk engineering and analytics centre to enhance the understanding of risk and how best to mitigate risk.