As insurance telematics and usage-based insurance (UBI) programmes continue to grow, insurers have opportunities to tap into consumer behaviour and create personalised services. The old school Black Box was a crude way to monitor younger drivers, but app-based telematics schemes are much more layered; it’s about where you drive regularly, who is driving, where is the car being parked overnight and how quickly can claims be sorted using on-scene images? Lots to think about and so Earnix are rethinking the telematics concept for the modern era.
The scores that insurers give customers are just the tip of the iceberg. Not only are there technological benefits such as access to accurate data but insurers should consider the part UBI plays in helping them to understand the psychological habits of drivers. Getting to know the risk profile of customers and assessing how they can respond creates value for different sectors of the market and is a game changer for the industry.
Sharona Sagi, Director of Business Applications at Earnix highlighted this at the recent Earnix Xcellerate Conference held in London. Earnix is a global provider of real-time AI-driven rating, analytical underwriting, dynamic pricing, product personalisation, and fully operational telematics solutions for Insurance.
“However, a key issue in the industry is how to convince customers to install telematics in the first place,” Sagi explained to the group of 250 insurance practitioners. “A typical motivator is price. Someone who is price sensitive might go for a programme in which they save on miles if they don’t drive much or are interested in a discount. “But as an industry we can be creative and assess other motivations to install telematics. For instance, a ‘peace of mind’ app is hugely attractive to parents who can track information about how their children are driving or to view, in real time, if they have taken the car out in the first place.”
A fast track to claims app is also an invaluable tool for customers involved in an accident. A crash is traumatic enough without the added burden of thinking about the claim. Using an app makes the situation smoother by guiding the users actions at the scene of the crash and how to go through the claims process. Insurers can also be creative in their pricing, if customers use the telematics app to claim and receive the money within a guarantee of 30 days this is also a persuader and reason to install telematics.
DATA IS IN THE DRIVING SEAT
In response to this, Earnix has developed Drive-It, a smartphone app that integrates the Earnix UBI solution to enable insurers to develop and deliver highly personalised UBI offers, including scoring and segmenting drivers by their individual risk. Insurers can also customise risk scores and build their own risk scores, modelling other risk related factors to develop targeted offers including external data such as weather and location.
Constantina Panayidou, Head of Actuarial Non-Life Pricing at ERGO Hellas speaking at the conference stated, “Telematics gives us the ability to locate a vehicle in real time, ultimately improving customer experience which explains why it’s so widely used in fleet management. A real time app offering additional services such as automatic collision notification and emergency medical and roadside assistance telematics provides real value.”
This information can be progressed by clustering data gained from telematics to relate with customers and segment them. For instance, if you have a group of drivers with high mileage and a low telematics score this gives you a chance to think about how to approach them as a group. How can you reduce their risk, do you want to give them a special offer, do you want to keep them on your books? These are the aspects that insurers can consider by understanding the wealth of data at hand.
Customer retention is far more than meeting the customer at claims or renewal. It’s about engagement. This is where insurers can improve retention by leveraging data, assessing the different risk parameters of the driver, using telematics creatively, and contextualising UBI offers.
Be the first to comment