Skip to main content

Europe to lead insurance telematics market

The number of insurance telematics users in Europe will grow from 1.5 million in 2010 to 44 million in 2017, initially driven by the UK and Italy, according to ABI Research. Despite aggressive efforts from Progressive, North America will continue to lag behind the European UBI market, it says. Vice president and practice director Dominique Bonte comments, “While insurance telematics or usage based insurance (UBI) is far from a recent phenomenon, renewed interest in this market has been observed from both es
June 14, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
RSSThe number of insurance telematics users in Europe will grow from 1.5 million in 2010 to 44 million in 2017, initially driven by the UK and Italy, according to 5725 ABI Research. Despite aggressive efforts from Progressive, North America will continue to lag behind the European UBI market, it says.

Vice president and practice director Dominique Bonte comments, “While insurance telematics or usage based insurance (UBI) is far from a recent phenomenon, renewed interest in this market has been observed from both established players and new entrants with uptake accelerating and the very nature of UBI changing dramatically from pay as you drive (PAYD) to pay how you drive (PHYD) based on continuous driver behaviour monitoring and analysis.”

Increasingly, pure UBI is integrated into a wider set of safety and security connected car services. This is not new; in Italy, stolen vehicle tracking was the starting point for insurance telematics and this notion is now spreading to driver behaviour monitoring feedback, including sharing and comparing scores on social networks. Insurance telematics is absorbed in and being carried forward by the emerging connected car boom.

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, it remains to be seen whether established insurance companies will back a more open, transparent approach as it relates to data collection and sharing which might slow down the uptake of UBI considerably.  

Future growth of UBI will be increasingly driven by smartphones wirelessly connecting to the OBD bus via Bluetooth adapters. The recent announcement from 278 Ford and 2192 State Farm to launch insurance telematics via Sync vehicle health reports constitutes the de facto start of phone-based UBI.

ABI Research’s 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

  • April 17, 2012
    Connected nav shipments to reach 27 million by 2016
    Connected infotainment will be dominated by connected navigation, with global shipments reaching 27 million by 2016, according to a new report from ABI Research. However, widespread interest in multimedia streaming, social media integration, and in-car Wi-Fi is still unproven.
  • August 23, 2012
    Global ADAS revenues to reach $460 Billion by 2020
    ABI Research is predicting that global advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) revenues will surge from $22.7 billion in 2012 to $460.8 billion in 2017, with Asia-Pacific remaining the leading ADAS market throughout the forecast period. “Both commercial and regulatory drivers are expected to boost the ADAS market in the coming years,” says VP and practice director Dominique Bonte. “On the one hand, OEMs such as Ford have started rolling out ADAS features on medium to low-end cars in order to bolster their
  • 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
  • March 22, 2012
    Automotive telematics and smart energy will lead M2M market growth
    According to ABI Research’s new study, Cellular M2M Connectivity Services, the M2M market has become a fully mainstream segment of the cellular industry. By the end of 2011, most major mobile operators in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region had established M2M business units to focus their efforts in this fast growing market. ABI Research predicts that the market for cumulative cellular M2M connections will rise from about 110 million connections in 2011 to approximately 365 million connectio