UK’s first humanoid robot home insurance arrives before the robots do

British homeowners can now insure a humanoid robot against the two things everyone half expects from one: getting broken, and breaking something else. Specialist broker Adrian Flux has added cover for domestic humanoid robots to its home insurance, underwritten by Tokio Marine HCC International, and the two firms call it the first policy of its kind in the UK. The catch is timing, because the robots it covers have barely reached anyone’s living room.

The cover runs in both directions. It pays for damage to the robot or its theft, and for sudden damage the machine causes to the house or the things inside it. It includes personal liability if the robot injures someone or damages another person’s property. And it pays for emergency recovery or a safe shutdown after a sudden or unforeseen malfunction, a clause that treats a household helper less like an appliance and more like a car. The insurers say it appears to be the first policy anywhere that protects both the home and the robot.

That pairing is the point. A standard contents policy is built for objects that stay where you put them, like a television or a laptop. A walking machine meant to tidy, fetch and carry moves around children, pets and staircases, and it can cause damage on its own. “A robot that costs thousands of pounds is not something you want sitting outside your insurance policy,” said Stuart Heath, head of distribution, international, at Tokio Marine HCC International. He added that insurance “has traditionally reacted to rather than facilitated new markets and products.”

What the announcement leaves out is just as telling. Neither company has published a price, an excess or the policy wording, so there is no way yet to know what a robot adds to a premium, or where a “sudden or unforeseen” malfunction ends and wear, misuse or a bad software update begins. The published description also says nothing about the risk that worries security people most: a connected machine with cameras and microphones walking around a home, and what happens if someone hacks it. Humanoids have already been described as potential “botnets in physical form.”

Liability is the harder problem. If a robot knocks a visitor down the stairs, the blame could sit with the owner, the manufacturer, the company that wrote its software, or all of them. Home insurance covers the policyholder’s own legal liability, and when a design or software fault is to blame, the injured party or the insurer may turn to the manufacturer under product liability law, as the trade title Insurance Business pointed out. Early home robots add one more variable: 1X, maker of the NEO humanoid, has said remote human operators can take control for tasks the robot has not learned yet.

Adrian Flux has tried this kind of early bet before. The broker launched what it billed as the UK’s first driverless car policy in 2016, long before British buyers could own a self-driving car, and general manager Gerry Bucke says the robot cover will follow the same path. “As robots start to arrive in people’s homes, we wanted to work with TMHCCI to provide clarity on who is responsible if something goes wrong,” he said. Like the car policy, it “will be updated as the technology and the risks evolve.”

The robots themselves are coming from the US first. Home humanoids there are on open pre-order for about $20,000, roughly £14,900. NEO, the best known, costs that much to buy or $499 a month on subscription, with 1X promising first US deliveries this year. The two insurers expect domestic robots in UK homes from 2027, and the new cover is open only to UK customers buying home insurance through Adrian Flux.

So the first British policy written for a home robot insures a guest that has not arrived yet. Its real test comes the first time one of them drops something expensive and somebody has to decide whose fault it was.

Tags: robotics, humanoid robots, 1X Technologies, Adrian Flux, home insurance, Tokio Marine HCC