Insurers Fear eCall for Cars
10 Mar 2011
According to the European Commission, every new vehicle in the future will be equipped with a device which sends an alert in case of a severe accident. Many insurance companies now fear that car manufacturers will use the technology to destroy the insurance's claims management.
Insurance companies in Germany are up in arms against the European eCall system in its current form. They fear that car manufacturers will use the technology to systematically route vehicles involved in an accident into their (higher cost) workshops. "We might then not be able to manage the claim and would pay much higher repair costs", says Klaus-Jürgen Heitmann, Member of the Board of HUK-Coburg. While Allianz, who already partners with the automotive industry, is supporting the initiative, the majority of insurers are skeptic as they have built their own repair network with lower hourly wages. HUK for example grants a 20 percent discount on their collision premium if the customer allows their car to be repaired in one of these shops.
Like their colleagues in Italy, German insurers are also starting to pro-actively offer similar functionalities to their customers. They integrate telematic services like automatic crash notification, stolen vehicle tracking and usage-based rates into their insurance offering, covering the cost for the necessary hardware and installation. Since 2010, the public insurer of Sachsen-Anhalt offers such a service for only EUR 9,90 a month. Now the Provinzial-Rheinland insurance has followed in March.
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