Hildur Smaradottir and Karsten Ries: How a Nordic IoT partnership has scaled proactive insurance

Imagine having the peace of mind that your home’s safety is under your control, even when you are away. And when combined with an up to 30% reduction in some damage costs when the worst does happen, there is a powerful proposition for consumers and insurers alike.

This is according to Hildur Smaradottir, chief executive at Norwegian smart home insurtech Ohma, who discussed the benefits of the proactive insurance that the technology behind the Internet of Things (IoT) has enabled.

Smaradottir, alongside Karsten Ries, group chief executive at IoT software and hardware provider Onics, sat down with Insurance Times to discuss the technological developments behind IoT and how it is enabling a new type of proactive insurance coverage.

According to IBM, the IoT is a “network of physical devices, vehicles, appliances and other physical objects that are embedded with sensors, software and network connectivity, allowing them to collect and share data”.

These devices can range from the industrial – like weather stations, traffic management systems and factory production line components – to the personal, like home security cameras, smart fridges and even wearables.

The growing maturity and prevalence of these products was the catalyst for a partnership between Nordic insurer If, its subsidiary home protection platform Ohma and technology provider Onics.

Ries describes the path his firm has taken to arrive at the partnership: “We were established 15 years ago, starting in different spaces of the IoT world, but over the last five to 10 years we have focused on completing an end-to-end solution focusing on insurance companies.

“We were building a solution to support the insurance companies in monitoring the assets that they are insuring – this could be properties, for example. They are continually connected to the internet, physically from the sensor through a gateway to the internet and up to the cloud, then out to an app for the end user.”

Mature technology

According to Ries, his firm was approached by insurers many times in the years before its partnership with If and Ohma, but the projects had never quite succeeded.

The reason for this, he says, was that the technology at the time was not quite ready for the market. Now, however, the end-to-end technology is mature and the value to both end users and insurance partners is clear and documented.

For Ohma, this value comes in the form of early warning systems. Escape of water is the most commonly reduced or prevented incident, with fires, burglaries and environmental risks among the additionally monitored risks.

Smaradottir explains how this has shaped Ohma’s offering: “The service is essentially designed to move from being a reactive partner with a customer, to becoming a proactive partner – there are benefits for both the customer and the insurer.”

In Ohma’s commercial model, the customer does not pay an upfront cost, but pays a subscription fee for the physical monitoring devices and the mobile application.

Smaradottir says: “Our insurance partner, If, have, with our help, designed a system that includes much more than just alarms and devices. You can also get help – for example if there’s water in your home – from a plumber.  You don’t have to pay the deductible in case of damage and so on and so forth.

“There’s also the peace of mind of having full control, both of your own home, but also a second home or a cabin, where you may not be every other weekend. You know that you have full control even if there is an incident.”

Smaradottir believes the results are tangible. An analysis conducted with If revealed that the technology could reduce the cost associated with damage caused by escape of water by over 30%.

Those results were achieved with Onics’ own sensors and monitoring, but Ries says the technology has the potential to be much more flexible and far reaching than custom-made tools.

He explains: “The setup is all open standard protocols. You can also connect other third-party vendor sensors to this. For example, it could be electronic door locks, or cameras, a lot of other stuff can be connected to the platform and then can be managed all the way to the end user.”

Predictive capabilities

Furthermore, Ries suggests that the large volumes of high quality data can be used by insurers to ultimately lower costs, reduce premiums for customers and develop a more loyal and stickier user base through add-on services.

Smaradottir agrees. “As we start gathering the data and leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse it, we can start predicting the customers that you should give this type of solution to, to lower the risk in your portfolio,” she says.

“There’s a lot of high quality data coming from the devices.”

While the use of sensors and smart home tooling is not unheard of in the UK insurance industry, it often comes in the form of partnerships to offer discounted devices or retrospective premium decreases from installations, rather than IoT integrated, customer-first platforms.

Following the November 2025 announcement of Onics’ intent to enter the UK market, Ries is keen to highlight how the technology has dramatically improved in recent years – the successes of If, Ohma and Onics, he believes, demonstrate that the technology is ready.

Now its up to insurers to capitalise on it.