With more and more international motor insurers implementing usage-based insurance (UBI) products using data from in-car (telematics) devices, Towers Watson has made several senior appointments to lead the wider roll-out of its DriveAbilitySM programme.
DriveAbility provides strategic, logistics and analytical support to enable insurers to create products that are priced according to monitored driver behaviours and help policyholders improve driving habits. To date, the
company has mainly focused on the United States where it has created a hosted data service for a pool of participating US insurers. This has resulted in the analysis of millions of individual journeys so far.
The international DriveAbility programme will be led by Geoff Werner. Fellow UBI veterans Robin Harbage, Eric Shishko and Tony Lovick will respectively take charge of sales and marketing, operations and logistics, and analytics.
Rory O'Brien, global head of the Risk Consulting and Software business at Towers Watson, said the intention is to help companies adapt to a completely different business model for car insurance. He said: "Our experience, not only in the US but also in Europe, means we can help insurers avoid the potholes on the way to developing attractive and profitable UBI products. We add significant value in the sophistication of the analytics we help clients apply to the massive volumes of data that are typically generated. In addition we help clients navigate unfamiliar regulatory and technology issues to tailor a complicated product to each company's particular brand."
The level of interest in UBI in the United States is reflected in the fact that every State except Hawaii now has at least one product available to vehicle owners. Several schemes have also been launched in the UK, Italy,
Canada, Israel, Japan and South Africa.
Rory O'Brien said: "The products that already exist have only scratched the surface of the potential of this market in our opinion. With the pressures on profitability that car insurers in many parts of the world face, the
ability to harness telematics capability could lead to a revolution in the way that motor insurance is offered."
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