Skip to main content

89 million insurance telematics subscribers by 2017

According to new research by ABI Research, insurance telematics users will grow at a CAGR of 90 per cent from 1.85 million in 2010 to 89 million in 2017.
March 13, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
According to new research by 5725 ABI Research, insurance telematics users will grow at a CAGR of 90 per cent from 1.85 million in 2010 to 89 million in 2017. Dominique Bonte, group director, telematics and navigation, comments, “While insurance telematics or usage based insurance (UBI) is far from a recent phenomenon – US-based Progressive was already trialling solutions back in 2002 – a renewed interest in this market has occurred over the past two years, with an acceleration in uptake, as well as a dramatic change in the very nature of UBI, migrating from pay as you drive (PAYD) to pay how you drive (PHYD) based on continuous driver behaviour monitoring and analysis.”

UBI allows insurance vendors to establish a continuous communication and feedback channel to build brand loyalty in an increasingly competitive auto insurance market. In the same way, value-added service packages including emergency services, roadside assistance, stolen vehicle tracking, teen driver monitoring, and vehicle diagnostics are often offered.

While the de-averaged pricing model and fairness principle of UBI to treat customers as individuals and have them pay for the risks they are actually taking instead of premiums depending on inaccurate proxies such as age and gender is gaining acceptance, many barriers hindering mass market uptake are still in place: self-selection of low risk drivers, privacy, lack of understanding of complex offers, lack of historical perspective validated by statistical data, absence of standards, installation of telematics hardware, and IP litigation.    

While currently the default UBI hardware solution consists of a dedicated device plugged into the vehicle’s diagnostics OBD port, future UBI hardware solutions will increasingly be based on either factory-installed technology (as in-car connectivity penetration rates increase) or – for the aftermarket – converged devices such as smartphones wirelessly connecting to the OBD bus via Bluetooth adapters.

ABI Research’s new study, “Insurance Telematics,” covers the different solutions for insurance telematics including PAYD and PHYD across different form factors such as embedded, portable, and converged in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Rest of the World. It includes detailed descriptions of market drivers and barriers, as well as shipment, subscribers, and discount forecasts.

Related Content

  • February 14, 2014
    More than 20 million connected cars with built-in software-based security by 2020
    The findings of ABI Research’s Automotive Safety & Autonomous Driving and Cybersecurity Research Services indicate that while traditional safety telematics services such as eCall, bCall, stolen vehicle tracking, and diagnostics aimed at the physical protection of vehicles, drivers and passengers are becoming main stream, awareness is growing about the threat of cyber-attacks and their impact on the physical integrity of persons, especially with vehicle-to-vehicle communication and autonomous vehicles. This
  • July 17, 2012
    Growth of telematics-based pay as you drive car insurance systems
    Car insurance made cheaper by telematics has returned to news headlines in the UK this year. Will it really take off this time and can vehicle tracking provide an effective tool for enforcing or encouraging insurance compliance? Jon Masters reports Will 2012 go down as the year that telematics-based car insurance took off? In the UK at least, a groundswell of new policies, with premiums priced on the basis of tracked and analysed driving style, suggests a turning point has been reached. Some would argue t
  • December 22, 2016
    Growth of embedded car OEM telematics subscribers
    According to a new research report by Berg Insight, the number of telematics service subscribers using embedded systems will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36.4 per cent from 26.5 million subscribers at the end of 2015 to 170.2 million subscribers at the end of 2021. In addition, Berg Insight forecasts that shipments of embedded car OEM telematics systems worldwide will grow from almost 13.8 million units in 2015 at a CAGR of over 25.1 per cent to reach 52.8 million units in 2021. In Eur
  • December 21, 2015
    Telematics will ‘uber-ise’ the auto insurance industry, says new UBI study
    Ptolemus Consulting Group has released the 2016 edition of its usage-based insurance global study by offering a free, 125-page abstract. Available to download today, the document reveals the key findings of the 1,000-page telematics insurance market analysis. With 230 active programmes and 12 million customers, usage-based insurance (UBI) is now a truly global phenomenon that reaches twice as many countries as two years ago. Ptolemus claims that by 2020, nearly 100 million vehicles globally will be in