Seven killer questions to ask your telematics provider. Written by Linden Holliday CEO at MyDrive Solutions Limited

Transcription

1 Seven killer questions to ask your telematics provider Written by Linden Holliday CEO at MyDrive Solutions Limited

2 Contents Title Page No. A change in proposition 3 Knowledge is key 4 Large scale proposition 6 How will you collect my data? 7 How do I know the data is accurate? 8 How will the data be analysed? 9 How will you install the offering? 10 How will you present my data? 11 How will you aggregate the Big Data? 12 How do you tailor the offering to suit customer needs? 13 Reaping the rewards 14 Pg 2

3 A change in proposition The European Court of Justice s ruling on the use of gender to price insurance catalysed the automotive insurance industry into exploring alternative methods for pricing. Insurance Telematics is now emerging as a viable and competitive solution and, rather conveniently, opens a wide range of new products and service offerings, which benefit both drivers and insurers. As this migration occurs, a number of pitfalls are emerging for the insurers that could result in costly backtracking, poor customer experience and bad pricing decisions. In the main, these problems stem from ill-prepared traditional telematics providers offering services branded as insurance telematics capable. The reality is that Insurance Telematics solutions require a very different set of capabilities. Additionally, consumers are far more sensitive to privacy, transparency and quality than ever before - but most of all they need to understand the value they will receive as a trade off for giving up personal data. Pg 3

4 Knowledge is key Automotive insurance product managers need to understand what best-practice insurance telematics should look like. The problem is that the fleet telematics providers don t provide the solutions that insurers need and more often than not, the insurers are unaware of the limitations. Indeed, the true advantages of a properly implemented driver behaviour and risk profiling solution may be negated or adversely affect an insurance company because of poor partner selection. The main issues are scalability, data granularity and pricing. Traditional telematics companies are not scaled for the large volumes of devices that a consumer insurance policy might attract. Typical telematics businesses (that traditionally came from supporting a fleet model) might be managing 20,000 vehicles, whereas a successful telematics insurance product might exceed that volume in just three months of operation, growing to potentially millions of drivers in a few years. Traditional enterprise databases and application frameworks are simply not up to this task and new, scalable and dynamic technologies are required. Pg 4

5 For example, the fleet business is based around the vehicle rather than the driver. A fleet vehicle may be driven by a large number of different drivers of varying abilities. It may therefore be difficult for a fleet based telematics provider to create a reliable telematics solution if it cannot identify whether it is collecting data from one driver in a vehicle, or multiple drivers in that same vehicle. To further complicate this, a fleet vehicle may only be driven in certain areas and at certain times, consequently not allowing a fleet based telematics business to create a reliable model since it does not capture data in a broad variety of road situations. Compounding these issues, the fleet telematics methods of assessing the skill of the driver are inadequate for the more subtle questions needed to fully assess individual driver risk. Only platforms that are geospatially aware at their core are able to provide the context required to get to the full detail of a driver s behaviour. Pg 5

6 Large scale proposition MyDrive Solutions has worked with leading insurers to build insurance telematics propositions that work well and at very large scale. As a consequence of our experience, we have compiled the seven following questions, which must be answered by any business claiming to provide an insurance telematics solution. Insurance Telematics must enable the insurer to fully understand the way their insured party drives and therefore the risk they present the solution must be capable and fit for purpose, not simply a me-too response to a changing market. How will you collect my data? How do I know the data is accurate? How will the data be analysed? How will you install the offering? How will you present my data? How will you aggregate the Big Data? How do you tailor the offering to suit customer needs? Pg 6

7 How will you collect my data? It is vital to choose a device that fits your market and data requirements. Choices need to be made in relation to how data is collected and how the results are portrayed to the user. The principle methods of data collection are: A professionally installed black box. An OBD dongle device that plugs into a vehicle s engine diagnostic port. An application downloaded to a customer s Smartphone. Or a blend of the above methodologies. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of the above three solutions in terms of flexibility, price and simplicity of installation. It is important that your provider can support each of these solution types as well as independently assess the merits of each against your requirements. Pg 7

8 How do I know the data is accurate? Capturing data at greater levels of frequency allows a more detailed picture of driver behaviour to be developed and in turn, more accurate pricing in the short and long term. As telematics based propositions become more sophisticated, having access to large archives of data that can be mined accurately will become ever more important. Data collected at a frequency of one second or better is a minimum requirement for any telematics solution to provide the detailed granularity of data required to properly assess driving style. A telematics provider will also need to demonstrate reliable compression and transfer of this data in order to keep connectivity costs of the solution to a minimum and ensure a complete data set is captured. Pg 8

9 How will the data be analysed? Data analysis by a telematics provider must take into account two key elements: An understanding of driving location. A comparison of the driving behaviours against a validated reference. If you don t know where the driver was and what was happening when the driver made a decision, then you won t be able to assess their level of skill and in turn score their competency. It is also crucial to provide a benchmark of measurements for driver behaviour, which can be done by comparing the subject s driving to a validated reference. This reference should be a low risk, well-trained professional driver, preferably from an accredited independent source. Without this calibration, the scores produced by a telematics provider will be subjective and inherently unreliable. Pg 9

10 How will you install the offering? Select partners who understand large-scale high availability installations. Consider that a single business driver will generate around 68 million data points per year, based on one second data sampling of their driving. 100,000 of these users will generate 680 billion lines of raw data, too much for traditional enterprise or small fleet scale systems. It is crucial to understand how the telematics provider will deal with this challenge. A telematics provider that is capable of coping with this big data volume would typically have invested in scalable, cloud-based platforms, operated by wellknown blue chip organisations, such as Amazon, IBM or Microsoft. Pg 10

11 How will you present my data? How does the telematics solution provider propose to deliver clear and meaningful feedback to your end customers? Can they do this via a mobile device or web portal? If you offer dynamic, easily available and relevant content, then many more drivers will visit on a regular basis. This greatly improves the traditional once a year interaction which currently exists between the insurer and the end customer at the moment. Portals on a smartphone and on the web that include trip information and specific feedback on driver score versus insurance premium deepen the interaction. Ask telematics providers whether their portal can be adaptable - not just to add branding and logo - but to integrate value added services, create regular customer interaction or build brand loyalty. For most driver groups easy access and regular updates on performance is key. Pg 11

12 How will you aggregate the Big Data? You should be able to understand how the telematics provider aggregates data. As previously discussed, a single driver can easily create 68 million data points in a driving year. Whilst this level of detail is far too granular to quickly interpret, merely presenting an end customer with a score out of 100 is likely to generate further questions around improvement or understanding of their weaknesses. Can the telematics provider go to greater levels of detail or logical disaggregation that is useful to you and the end user alike? Pg 12

13 How do you tailor the offering to suit customer needs? The telematics provider must be able to customise the data analysis to suit specific customer needs. If the provider has rigid analysis parameters, it may be unable to adapt behaviour scoring for unforeseen circumstances. Alternatively if a client may decide to more heavily weight one behaviour characteristic over another, an inflexible system may not be able to react to this. If you don t have clear and positive responses in relation to the above questions then your insurance telematics solution will fail and it could be a costly lesson to find this out. Pg 13

14 Reaping the rewards The metrics supporting the use of Telematics is compelling but only when deployed correctly. MyDrive fully understands not only the end result of Telematics but more importantly the complexity of the data behind it. Through accurately assessing and benchmarking the collated data against a recognized industry standard, insurers can be reassured that the risk is far more precise than a standard proxy. Pg 14

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