The telematics revolution starts here
The automotive sector is ‘at the start of a revolution’ which will see factory-fitted telematics devices and, ultimately, end in automated driving.
In a blog on the LexisNexis website, Paul Stacy, founder of Wunelli, a LexisNexis Company, stated that, ‘From the view point of the major car makers, the revolution is being driven by connectivity, advanced driver aids (and in future full driverless technology) electrification and society itself, which is getting used to completely different types of mobility, with new players like Microsoft (with Toyota), Uber, Google and Apple moving into the automotive world.
According to Paul by 2020, the big car makers expect more than 75% of the global vehicle output to be actively connected.
He said, ‘Whereas motor insurers have experimented with telematics since 2010 and achieved significant penetration in commercial fleet, the UBI (usage-based insurance) market today is still quite niche, representing an estimated three per cent of all motor policies, but 60% to 70% of all inexperienced driver policies.
Paul continued, ‘Auto-connectivity represents one of the larger opportunities to take UBI mass-market and make it more ubiquitous. As the UBI sector evolves with a greater role for telematics embedded in new vehicles, there will be a need for more data matching and verification at scale across many different vehicle types and other devices. We see a journey towards ever-greater precision of telematics for risk purposes, but this is a complex challenge.’
He claimed the role of LexisNexis in this ‘emerging world’ is to help insurers understand the opportunity; provide the technology to score and rate driving data; and work with the OEMs to learn and configure services.
