Cognitive Imagery: The Key to Optimal Decision-Making for Insurers

As Cotality entered 2026 — its first full year operating under its new identity—the company’s insurance solutions division established four pillars to anchor innovation for the year and beyond.

These pillars were designed to transition Cotality from a software and data provider into an organization that truly empowers all operators in the property insurance industry, optimizing decision-making for every professional across the ecosystem.

Announced at INTRConnect™ 2026, these four pillars are:

• Cognitive imagery
• Interoperability
• Seamless workflows
• Agentic AI

When we make sure that every component of our product roadmap aligns with these pillars, we set our solutions up to turn what seems like endless property data into powerful intelligence that allows insurance professionals to be at their best.

Cognitive imagery, our first pillar, helps turn property imagery into a primary decision-making tool, helping the industry get a more comprehensive property view.

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What is cognitive imagery?

Cognitive imagery is the byproduct of AI that processes aerial and ground-level property imagery against multiple databases. Cotality’s solutions with cognitive imagery fuse property photography with intelligentlabels and data, instantly contextualizing what is featured in the photo.

Solutions enrich imagery by pulling data from:

• Public records: Tax records and MLS listings.
• Historical context: Previous insurance claims and weather patterns.
• Property DNA: Proprietary characteristics and building permits

Cognitive imagery converts records into comprehensive stories, reducing costly guesswork in its tracks.

At a time when underwriters and claims professionals face immense pressure from policyholders while navigating increasingly complex risk environments, cognitive imagery is the much-needed converter of abstract, disparate data into decisive action for property insurance carriers.

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What cognitive imagery means for underwriting

The window between a quote request and policy issuance has shrunk from days to hours, with no consideration for risk complexity. Cotality solutions for underwriters leverage cognitive imagery to help underwriters navigate the dueling pressures of speed and accuracy — all while driving a better understanding of high-risk areas.

Commercial Valuation™and Residential Valuation™

Cotality’s Commercial Valuation™ and ResidentialValuation™ solutions now leverage cognitive imagery to automatically populate underwriting estimates with real-time property characteristics and verified rebuild costs.

The Roof Intelligence Suite

The most telling part of a house’s ability to survive disaster is the roof, and now, Cotality applies cognitive imagery to evaluate the main factors that contribute to a roof’s sustainability:

• Age of Roof^™:Moves beyond homeowner estimates to determine age through building permits and localized weather-risk analytics.
• Roof Conditions Insights (RCI™): Uses AI to analyze the physical reality of the structure—identifying materials, layers, and the granular impact of lifetime weather exposure. materials, layers, and the granular impact of lifetime weather exposure.

This dual-pronged approach allows for more accurate risk determination.

Wildfire Conflagration Score™

This tool helps underwriters see beyond vegetation as they evaluate wildfire risk. The Wildfire Conflagration score utilizes cognitive imagery to help underwriters separate traditional wildfire threats from high-risk conflagration scenarios, providing the granular data needed for smarter, faster decisions.

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What cognitive imagery means for claims

One of the most frustrating and costly challenges in claims management is dispatching. Without an onsite presence, determining the appropriate Method of Inspection (MOI) for exterior claims remains inherently difficult. Making assumptions and sending the wrong resource means wasting money, or worse, compromising someone’s safety.

Cognitive imagery is now a part of Dispatch™, a smart automation engine that optimizes claims management by allocating the right resources to specific tasks based on skillset, geography, and real-time availability. By integrating cognitive imagery into the system, Dispatch now utilizes AI-analyzed aerial data to identify the most efficient and cost-effective MOI for each unique job.

This advancement enables carriers to automatically determine whether to deploy in-house adjusters or third-party roofing specialists, ensuring field resources are sent onsite with the property insights needed for safety and performance. Ultimately, this data-driven approach eliminates unnecessary third-party expenses and streamlines the entire dispatching workflow through a mobile-accessible system.

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Expanding with cognitive imagery

Cognitive imagery has already transformed insurance workflows for underwriters and claims professionals. Cotality is now deepening this integration across our entire suite—including hazard risk assessment to restoration solutions.

Our goal is to leverage this innovation pillar to provide the entire ecosystem with the power of clarity.

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