Insurance telematics: Creating the synergy

In the world of insurance telematics, personal-line insurance programs typically grab media headlines. Personal-line insurance refers to insurance offerings that are for individuals, such as homeowners, rather than for businesses. Progressive Snapshot, Allstate Drive Wise, and State Farm Drive Safe & Save programs are closely watched to assess whether the long awaited promises of usage-based insurance (UBI) will finally come to fruition for both the insurance companies and the telematics service providers who support them.

But much more quietly (in the eyes of those who follow insurance telematics), insurance companies are gaining significant traction in telematics-based programs for their commercial fleet customers. Insurance companies are gaining a new type of customer loyalty, by offering similar discount and reward programs for those fleets which demonstrate safe driving behaviors, based on the latest available technologies found in telematics.

See also: Driver behavior: Managing your risk and lowering insurance premiums

As with personal-line telematics programs, various insurance companies are now able to collect key data points on how to improve driver behavior, which also includes real-time feedback. Moreover, improving driver behavior can reduce fuel consumption costs, maintenance costs, as well as employee claims costs.

While commercial telematics has been around for many years - longer than what we are now seeing proliferated in consumer offerings such as GM OnStar, Ford Sync and aftermarket programs such as Progressive Snapshot, only recently have we seen the safety technologies integrated into telematics hardware and firmware.

Companies such as Liberty Mutual, The Hartford, Travelers and Zurich offer fleet customers much more than the ability to view their vehicles on a map... they now offer tools to their fleet customers to help ensure that drivers arrive home safe at the end of each day.

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