Across commercial and industrial property, insurers are tightening their expectations.
Electrical fires remain one of the leading causes of major losses – and many can be traced back to loose connections, overloaded circuits and deteriorating components that could have been caught early with infrared thermography.
That’s why more insurers now require regular thermal imaging surveys and written proof that risks are being identified and closed out. Recent guidance highlights:
- Annual infrared thermography inspections as part of NFPA 70B-aligned maintenance programmes
- Infrared surveys being written into underwriting or renewal conditions for many commercial policies
- Insurer risk-engineering teams (AIG, Zurich, FM Global and others) calling out thermography as a key control for electrical fire and machinery breakdown risk
For thermographers and inspection companies, this shift creates a clear mandate:
It’s not enough to “do” the survey – you must prove to insurers that it was done properly.
In this article, we’ll break down what an insurance-compliant thermography report needs to show, and how SnapCor helps inspectors deliver that documentation quickly, cleanly and consistently.
Why Insurers Care About Thermographic Evidence
Infrared thermography is one of the most powerful tools in electrical and mechanical risk engineering. It reveals abnormal heat patterns – hot spots – long before components fail or ignite.
Insurers view regular thermography as a way to:
- Reduce fire and breakdown claims – Several risk-engineering bulletins link overheating equipment to a large proportion of fire and property damage losses, particularly in warehouses and industrial facilities.
- Demonstrate an effective Electrical Preventive Maintenance (EPM) programme – AIG and others explicitly recommend programmes anchored by regular infrared inspections and proper documentation of findings and corrective actions.
- Verify compliance with NFPA 70B and similar standards – Many insurers now treat NFPA 70B 2023 as the baseline for electrical inspection practice, including its requirement for periodic thermographic inspections and formal record-keeping.
From the insurer’s point of view, a thermal imaging report is evidence that:
- The right equipment was inspected.
- It was inspected under appropriate load and conditions.
- Anomalies were measured, graded and acted upon.
- The organisation is managing electrical fire risk proactively.
That’s why the structure and content of your reports matter just as much as the images themselves.
NFPA 70B & Insurance: The Documentation Baseline
NFPA 70B 2023 has effectively moved from “good practice” to an enforceable standard in many jurisdictions. It now:
- Mandates inspection of all electrical equipment at least every 12 months, with more frequent thermography for higher-risk “Condition 3” equipment.
- Requires thermographers to measure and document temperature differences (ΔT) between components and between components and ambient air under comparable loading.
- Emphasises that inspections must be performed by qualified thermographers, with findings documented and followed up.
Insurance-aligned risk bulletins distil this further. A typical insurer expects your thermography documentation to demonstrate:
- A planned inspection frequency aligned with NFPA 70B or their own data sheets (e.g. FM Global DS 5-20).
- Survey execution by competent, certified personnel using suitable, calibrated equipment.
- Clear records of anomalies, severity classifications and corrective actions, retained for comparison over time.
So what does that look like in a real-world report?
Insurance-Compliant Thermography Reports: What Inspectors Need to Show
If your client’s insurer asks for evidence, these are the elements they expect to see in a thermography report for insurance compliance.
1. Scope, Purpose and Standards Referenced
Start by stating:
- Why the inspection was carried out (insurance renewal, new policy, post-incident survey, routine EPM).
- Which standards or insurer guidance you are working to – typically NFPA 70B, relevant national wiring regs (such as BS 7671 in the UK), and any insurer-specific data sheets.
This immediately tells an underwriter that the work aligns with recognisable frameworks rather than ad-hoc good intentions.
2. Site and Asset Identification
An insurance-grade report must make it obvious what was inspected:
- Facility name, address and client details
- Date and time of inspection
- Asset list / inventory (switchboards, MCCs, distribution boards, transformers, etc.) with unique IDs
NFPA 70B and IRINFO guidance both stress clear identification of locations and equipment in the report so findings can be traced and revisited.
3. Thermographer Credentials and Equipment Details
Insurers increasingly check that inspections are performed by qualified thermographers using appropriate tools.
Your report should document:
- Thermographer name, company and certification level (e.g. ISO 18436 or equivalent).
- Thermal imaging equipment used (model) and calibration status.
- Any relevant training or accreditation.
This section is one reason clients often choose specialists like Ti Thermal Imaging Ltd, whose Level 3 thermographers produce insurer-accepted reports across the UK and Europe.
4. Camera Settings and Environmental Conditions
NFPA 70B 2023 and related guidance emphasise that reports should document how measurements were taken, not just the end result.
At minimum, your report should record:
- Emissivity and reflected apparent temperature values
- Ambient temperature and humidity at the time of inspection
- Approximate load on each circuit or asset (in %, amps or kW)
This allows insurers (or independent risk engineers) to judge whether the inspection was conducted under meaningful load and whether ΔT values are reliable.
5. ΔT, Load Correction and Severity Classification
From an insurance perspective, temperature differences and severity grading are where thermography becomes actionable.
NFPA 70B requires documentation of ΔT between the area of concern and a suitable reference point or ambient air.
Best practice is to present, for each anomaly:
- Measured temperatures (fault, reference, ambient)
- Load-corrected temperatures where applicable
- ΔT values
- A severity classification – ideally using a consistent scheme (e.g. Minor, Important, Serious, Critical) informed by standards like BS 7671 and proven thermal indexing formulas.
This is exactly the approach embedded in TICOR’s electrical thermography module and extended into SnapCor, where algorithms and load-correction formulas automatically grade faults from Minor to Critical based on ΔT and 100% load estimates.
6. Image Evidence: Thermal and Visual
Insurers expect to see image evidence for each significant anomaly:
- At least one thermal image with clear palettes and markers
- A corresponding visual image showing the exact piece of equipment
- Image captions linking to asset IDs and fault numbers
Zurich, AIG and others highlight thermal images as a way to document hot spots like loose terminations long before a claim occurs.
7. Root Cause, Risk and Recommended Actions
A compliant report doesn’t just say “it’s hot” – it explains what that means in risk and remediation terms.
Insurers typically look for:
- A probable root cause for each anomaly (e.g. loose connection, overload, phase imbalance, insulation breakdown).
- The risk implications (e.g. fire, equipment failure, production loss).
- A clear recommended action, timeframe and priority, aligned with severity.
Thermography software that uses knowledge-based libraries – like TICOR and the reporting engine inside SnapCor – helps inspectors choose consistent root-cause and remedial descriptions from pre-built lists, ensuring professional and uniform language across reports.
8. Follow-Up and Trending
Finally, insurers want to see that findings don’t just sit in a PDF.
Good practice – and increasingly, insurer expectation – is to:
- Record when critical issues were addressed and by whom.
- Repeat thermal imaging after repairs to confirm the risk is closed.
- Track recurring issues and component condition over multiple surveys.
This is where trending data and campaign management tools like TICOR and new-generation platforms such as SnapCor come into their own, letting you compare images, ΔT values and severity over time.Image Evidence: Thermal and Visual
Common Gaps That Undermine Insurance Compliance
Even experienced thermography teams often fall short of this insurance-grade standard. The most common issues we see include:
- Missing ΔT and load data – reports show only absolute temperatures with no reference, making it hard to judge true risk against NFPA 70B criteria.
- No severity classification – underwriters must infer urgency from narrative text, which is slower and less reliable.
- Poor asset identification – images and findings are not tied to unique board or asset IDs.
- Inconsistent formatting between thermographers – each engineer has their own template, meaning key fields are missed or presented differently.
- No recorded follow-up – insurers see the same hot spot appearing in report after report with no evidence of remediation.
The good news: most of these problems are process and tooling issues, not technical thermography gaps. That’s exactly what SnapCor was built to address.
How SnapCor Helps Inspectors Prove Insurance Compliance
SnapCor is a thermographic reporting platform built by Ti Thermal Imaging Ltd – a company that has been delivering insurance and BREEAM-compliant thermal imaging reports with certified thermographers for over a decade.
SnapCor takes the lessons learned from thousands of inspections and bakes them into a guided, insurance-ready workflow:
Standardised, Inspection-Led Templates
- You define an NFPA 70B-aligned inspection template once (scope, standards, safety notes, asset tables).
- Every engineer then follows the same step-by-step workflow on tablet or mobile, ensuring all mandatory fields (site details, thermographer credentials, environmental conditions) are captured.
Automatic ΔT, Load Correction and Severity Grading
- The engine inherited from TICOR handles ΔT and load-correction formulas consistently across all inspections.
- Faults are automatically graded from Minor to Critical using proven thresholds, giving insurers clear, repeatable prioritisation.
Image-Linked, Structured Data
- Thermal and visual images are captured directly against each asset and finding – no more guesswork with filenames later.
- All measurements, ΔT values and comments live in one structured dataset, ready for export or trending.
Root-Cause Libraries and Action Templates
- Engineers choose from standard root cause and recommended action libraries based on Ti’s real-world experience, ensuring consistent insurer-friendly wording.
On-Site, Insurance-Ready PDFs in Minutes
- At the end of the survey, SnapCor compiles all data into a clean, professional PDF that includes everything insurers expect: scope, dates, thermographer details, asset inventory, fault tables, images, severity grading and recommendations.
Instead of spending hours formatting Word or Excel documents, inspectors can hand clients an insurance-ready report before they leave site, giving immediate evidence for risk engineers, brokers and underwriters.
Turning Thermography into a Compliance Advantage
For building owners, FM providers and industrial operators, tighter insurance expectations around thermography are not going away. In fact, as NFPA 70B becomes embedded in underwriting and risk-engineering practice worldwide, the quality of your thermographic documentation will increasingly influence insurability and premiums.
For inspection firms and in-house thermography teams, that creates an opportunity:
- Deliver insurance-aligned reports as standard.
- Differentiate your service with clear severity grading and professional presentation.
- Use tools like SnapCor to prove – quickly and consistently – that your clients are managing electrical fire and equipment failure risk.
If you’re ready to move from “we did a scan” to “here is everything your insurer needs to see”, SnapCor gives you the structure, automation and consistency to get there.