Since the beginning of our journey at The Floow nine years ago, we have had the privilege of engaging with hundreds of insurance professionals from carriers worldwide. Many honour us with their business and ask us questions about the future of motor insurance.
I believe the future isn’t something that just happens. We can architect it and work hard to shape it, transforming challenges into opportunities in the process.
For example, the vision inspiring all at The Floow is to transform policyholders into willing partners in risk prevention. In this brave new world:
- End-users self select into Connected Insurance, their purchase and consumption effortless, frictionless, “no questions asked”
- Pricing decisions are automatically powered by sensor-driven, finely-grained understanding of an individual risk profile
- Pricing is personalised, hence fairer, fraud rooted out, touchless claims instantly managed and resolved to users’ delight
- Users are more than ever in control, their privacy sacrosanct, behaviourally coached towards safer driving, resulting in reduced claim frequency and severity
Connected Insurance makes sense because it returns to people time, money and, most importantly, safety.
At The Floow, both directly and with our strategic partners at Munich Re and TransUnion, we are helping leading carriers attain this vision, harnessing the power of mobility and contextual data.
Crucially, the current pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital products and increased customers comfort with remote-interaction¹. It has also curtailed mobility, introducing expectations of fairer premiums, personalised to individual circumstances.
I want to offer a concrete example of how we are helping carriers embrace our vision. A prominent use case features carriers with an established telematics offering. Many carriers, due to local market factors and/or regulatory reasons, have an installed base of fixed telematics devices².
They have good reasons to maintain their box-based portfolio and at the same time are keen to evolve a suite of mobile-first connected products, engaging smartphone or OEM based data for some or all of their new business.
Data collection from the phone is well established, we pioneered it in 2012. Carriers have the option to select FloowDrive or FloowKit. The mobile UX is exquisitely designed, impressing on the user a sense of accessibility and intuitiveness. The phone motion sensors produce data in support of scoring, automated crash detection, driver vs passenger identification, rewards and a host of engaging features. If required the phone can be augmented with FloowTag, a small Bluetooth Low Energy device which is installed to a vehicle to augment journey data collection.
However, in our carrier’s use case, the key questions are: how to ensure all our users benefit from the same mobile experience regardless of how data is being collected? How can we launch a mobile-first offer that co-exists with and leverages an existing fixed device portfolio? How can we protect a historical investment (and the data coming from that) while reaping the full rewards of next generation connected products?
At The Floow, we have a solution for that.
On the front end, we have flexed our FloowKit and FloowDrive mobile products so that they can selectively surface journey data and scores either from phone sensors or from other sources, depending on the technologies (OBD, Black Box, OEM) used by our clients.
This means that our carrier partner can craft an homogenous, mobile-centric end-user experience, enabling an “optimum proposition design” regardless of driving behaviour data source.
A crucial benefit of this solution is the availability of mobile phone distraction scores under any scenario.
For example, a carrier with a legacy OBD or box-based portfolio can now introduce the same app centric experience to both legacy, device-based users as well as to new policyholders connected via smartphone or OEM modules, ensuring smooth and uninterrupted service to users and agents.
The back-end of this solution leverages FloowScores, our device-agnostic data refinery solution generating consistent risk scores for every completed journey regardless of source, helping price policies and predict risk more accurately³.
As with any Floow scoring solution, we enable each insurance partner to create scoring IP that is unique to them. The Floow’s actuaries train scores against claims data, optimally predicting claims propensity and severity, thereby helping our partners build sustainable competitive advantage.
The hybridisation of smartphones and embedded devices represents a “best of both worlds” solution, giving carriers the freedom to maintain their traditional data capture strategy or evolve it, while at the same time deliver an exquisite mobile-first user experience, as well as predictive and consistent scores regardless of source.
In conclusion, insurance product leaders can focus energies on accelerating their digital journeys, serving users with mobile-first experiences irrespective of data origin.
In the race to digitise insurance offerings, the smartphone is a key enabler for enhanced customer interactions for all aspects of the insurance product lifecycle.
The app becomes the medium for the journey of the insured, the epicentre of the user experience and the fulcrum of telematics services including, for example, rewards from safe driving behaviour, prompt intervention in the event of a crash, location based services, education and Pay per Use.
Reach out if you feel our vision fits the goals of your organisation. Meet us to explore the richness of The Floow offering and how we can support your digital transformation in pursuit of safer mobility for all.
¹ According to McKinsey, in an October 2019 survey of more than 3,000 individuals across Europe, 38% reported that their preferred sales channel for life insurance is digital. After the first few weeks of the lockdown, this share rose to 54%
² In markets affected by higher theft or fraud, installed devices carry benefits. Preference for installed devices is strong also in Commercial Lines.
³ The Floow default score models are proven to be highly predictive of claims propensity, delivering >30% improvement in risk prediction, over and above traditional risk rating.
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