Towers Watson: Technology to become important for motor insurers' competitiveness

05 Dec 2011

Technology will become central in terms of competiveness with increasing pressure on insurance companies to support improved driver safety and bring claims inflation and prices under control. As Towers Watson DriveAbility UBI programme director of analytics, Tony Lovick, stated, the recent expansion in companies offering usage-based insurance (UBI) policies with telematics, is putting those companies without at risk of eventually being left with the bad risks.

Noting that UBI was just the beginning and outlined five priorities for the industry in 2012, including reducing young driver deaths, whiplash claims, fraud and uninsured driving, he added: „Existing technologies can certainly help towards these goals. As well as monitoring and providing feedback on driver behaviours, telematics devices can be used to record whiplash incidents. Other services such as automated emergency and breakdown calls are applications of the technology that would help customers and support safety objectives," added Lovick.
According to the company, mobile technologies are also increasingly likely to come into the competitive mix. The launch of price comparison apps by Moneysupermarket.com and Confused.com are a sign of things to come but who says that, as vehicle wireless connectivity improves, they have to stop at pricing, said Lovick.