The rise of data is the rise of information. And in vehicle telematics, that information matters to insurers. Which brings up the issue of insurance data exchanges.
As we’ve discussed before, data gathered from vehicles and drivers can have enormous impacts on things like insurance premiums, coverage, and even liability as it pertains to autonomous vehicles.
It can even automate the claims filing and review processes for drivers and insurers.
But the big questions are these: who owns that data, and how does the marketplace make sense of it?
Join us as we take a look at what the insurance data exchanges of the future might look like.
Data types
Let’s start with the basics. Automotive telematics data comes from one of three primary sources. There is OEM vehicle data, where sensors and processors built into the car by the manufacturer transmit information. There are on-board devices (OBD), which include hardware that plugs into and reads data from your vehicle. And app-based telematics uses the sensors in your phone to record driver data so it lives in your device.
This raises a couple important questions, however. First, if the driver is generating the data through their personal actions, do they “own” that data, even if they do not own the hardware? And secondly, how do we create one, unified scoring system to make sense of disparate data collected from inherently different sources?
Insurance data exchanges and credit bureaus
Today, when it comes to hardware-based telematics (OEM and OBD), that data belongs to the insurer. It is gathered by, and lives within, their devices. Therefore, it is theirs to analyze and leverage as they like.
The issue with that is how to aggregate and make sense of data from multiple different sources. Different sensors, different software, different file types, different fields, and different degrees of accuracy. These all make it quite difficult to compare one driver to another apples-to-apples.
Further, as data security becomes increasingly important in the wake of scandals like Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, we expect to see a push towards personal ownership of one’s own data.
Instead of flowing directly to the insurer, that data will eventually make its way to insurance data exchanges, similar in function to credit bureaus. The insurance data exchange or bureau will make drivers’ scores available to insurers, who will be able to offer the best drivers highly-personalized and competitive rates.
A better way than insurance data exchanges
Unfortunately, the exchange and “credit bureau” model struggle with the same challenge. How do they make sense of, and aggregate, data of different types and degrees of accuracy?
Fortunately, there’s a better way. If the industry could identify and isolate one data source as superior to the rest, it could cast aside inferior models and eliminate the cross-modal complexity that exists today.
That’s where Zendrive comes in. Our smartphone-based telematics data is six-times more reliable at predicting collisions than hardware-based telematics, and has analyzed over 100 billion miles of driver data, more than the rest of the industry combined.
Plus, the Zendrive platform also measures the most critical part of the driving equation: the driver. Instead of linking to a specific vehicle, like OBDs, Zendrive’s score is linked to the driver herself.
What’s more, it’s one of the only solutions that collects data about distracted driving, the primary cause of 30% of all accidents.
Perhaps we are just a shade biased. But adopting the Zendrive platform’s data could help solve many of the toughest issues around telematics and insurance today.
