AI InsurTech Startup Betterview Announces Key Additions to its Data Science Team

Betterview, which is quickly becoming the platform essential to every transaction around buildings and properties, today announced the appointments of John Lichtenstein and Dr. Arash Abadpour to its Data Science team.

“We are happy to announce the appointments of John Lichtenstein and Dr. Abadpour, who bring over 40 years worth of experience in developing risk models, statistical analysis, computer vision and machine learning to Betterview,” said David Lyman, CEO & Co-Founder, Betterview. “We are excited to apply their extensive experience to turbocharge our existing efforts around predictive risk scoring and imagery interpretation of properties for insurance underwriting.”

Currently, Betterview’s Roof Risk Score is being used by insurance companies on new business and renewals to assess the condition of roofs and the properties they insure. Carriers can use Betterview’s platform to investigate high-risk properties, as well as initiate risk-mitigation measures. Betterview is also expanding beyond the roof to drive towards a holistic view of buildings and properties.

Prior to joining Betterview, Mr. Lichtenstein worked in the consumer credit and mortgage industries for over 30 years at Hyundai Capital America, Experian, Ameriquest Mortgage Company, FICO, HNC Software and TRW. During his tenure at these organizations, Mr. Lichtenstein helped to develop various risk models, including loss frequency, lead generation mail responsiveness, consumer credit scoring, fraud detection and more. In addition, Mr. Lichtenstein also has extensive experience working with customers to implement predictive analytics into business processes.

“I feel like I am coming full circle in my new role at Betterview having been part of a team that not only helped to develop consumer credit scores but worked with customers to optimize them,” said John Lichtenstein, Principal Scientist, Betterview. “In both consumer lending and the insurance industries, scoring offers companies the chance to segment their business and take intelligent action. I am looking forward to applying my previous experience in consumer lending to create value for insurers by helping them to leverage state of the art predictive analytics into their quoting, underwriting and claims processes,” said Lichtenstein.

Along with the addition of Mr. Lichtenstein, Betterview has appointed Arash Abadpour as its new Computer Vision Scientist. Before joining Betterview, Dr. Abadpour, worked at FIO Corporation, Intellijoint Surgical (IJS), Epson and TRLabs using machine vision and image processing to help with surgical navigation for hip replacement surgery, diagnose infectious diseases in underdeveloped countries, human gait analysis and more.

“I have always found computer vision, image analysis and machine learning to be fascinating,” said Dr. Arash Abadpour, Computer Vision Scientist, Betterview. “While working on my master’s thesis in college, one of the projects I worked on was using computer vision to detect earthquake damage from satellite imagery. I really enjoyed this project, and I like the fact that I will have the opportunity to use state of the art machine learning algorithms to extract new data sources from imagery, allowing insurers to solve the age-old problems about risk,” explained Abadpour.

Along with his PhD in Electrical Engineering, Dr. Abadpour also holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Sharif University of Technology and has also authored over ten patents.