The future of connected car insurance, also called usage-based car insurance (UBI), whereby based on how you drive, when you drive and where you drive, you will receive a competitive quote if you are what the technology deems a ‘safe driver.’ Usage-based car insurance started in the late 2000’s as a niche experimental effort by a select number of insurance companies in select regional markets. Fueled by an increase in the number of connected cars and smartphones, it has now become a mainstream offer by most insurance carriers especially across North America and Europe
Jonathon Hewett, CMO of Octo Telematics, states in a recent interview, “Octo was born out of the dissatisfaction with one-size-fits-all approaches to insurance, which don’t reflect how we actually use our cars. We’ve seen rapid growth year on year in the uptake of telematics policies across Europe and the US, with Octo ending 2016 with more than 4.8 million global users. As the market evolves, we will see things like autonomous vehicles and car sharing become more mainstream, complicating both our roads and the way we insure our vehicles. Telematics data brings clarity and customization to our insurance policies.”