US home insurance firm Hippo has just acquired home maintenance company Sheltr, providing a fitting new use case for Hippo’s deployment of smart devices. The move reinforces the slow yet sweeping transformation of the responsibilities that we are seeing among insurers, which are moving towards more preventative roles in the market. Hippo Insurance is a California-based insurance company, launched in 2015. The most recent investment round of Series D funding raised $100 million from six venture capital firms, and it has around $209mn funding to date. Sheltr, founded in 2018, provides a home checkup service, where the company examines up to 28 separate components in the home. This saves consumers money in the long run, as faults are identified earlier,…