Skip to main content

UK insurers unprepared for driverless vehicles disruption, says KPMG report

The majority of insurers are completely unprepared for the arrival of driverless vehicles, according to a new study from KPMG. Its Autonomous Vehicle Insurer report canvassed the views of senior executives from many of the UK’s largest insurers and brokers on the impact driverless vehicles will have on their business. It found that most of them believe it will take two decades for driverless vehicles to impact the automotive sector. Despite acknowledging that driverless vehicles will touch every a
July 20, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
The majority of insurers are completely unprepared for the arrival of driverless vehicles, according to a new study from 1981 KPMG.
 
Its Autonomous Vehicle Insurer report canvassed the views of senior executives from many of the UK’s largest insurers and brokers on the impact driverless vehicles will have on their business. It found that most of them believe it will take two decades for driverless vehicles to impact the automotive sector.  

Despite acknowledging that driverless vehicles will touch every area of their business model, only one in 10 insurers have developed strategic plans, while four out of 10 said they are not making strategic investments in their business model to prepare for the arrival of this new technology.

Insurers highlighted consumer acceptance and safety standards as issues that need to be resolved before the UK sees mass adoption of driverless vehicles.

However, once this technology becomes mainstream the majority of insurers (89 per cent) believe that claims frequency and severity will decrease as a result.  
 
Murray Raisbeck, insurance partner at KPMG, said: “We are surprised that many insurers have been slow to react to the current technological changes taking place in the automotive sector.  Driverless vehicle technology will radically change the insurance market and in our view disruption will happen faster than most insurers think.”   

Raisbeck added: “Insurers need to overcome their apathy towards driverless vehicles. There are clear opportunities to develop new income streams for those firms that are prepared to step out of the pack and embrace the changes taking place in the sector.    

“Firms should model a range of scenarios around the impact autonomous vehicles will have on the market and their own business.  This will help them to identify the products that will resonate with their customers and to establish how and when these products can be developed."

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Watch your step: the sidewalk robots are here
    March 14, 2023
    The way we order and pay for goods has changed radically – but what about how those goods are delivered? Gordon Feller looks at how sidewalk robots might reshape the urban landscape
  • Harmonisation of Europe's ITS deployment still unbalanced
    January 31, 2012
    Dean Herenda, Chairman of the EasyWay project, talks about the progress made and the progress still to be made in harmonising ITS deployment across the European Union. "The deployment and use of ITS in road transport across Europe was and still is unbalanced" Although Europe can be proud of being home to some of the world's most advanced ITS solutions, the relative disparities between Member States of the European Union (EU) in terms of the extent and technological sophistication of deployments actually sta
  • SRP to accelerate development of future transport systems in UK
    October 1, 2018
    Avia, BP, Hastings Direct and Honda R&D have been named as founding members of a shared research programme (SRP) to test and develop transport technologies in the UK. The SRP is investing in a three-year year project at the Smart Mobility Living Lab: London (SMLL) led by the Transport Research Laboratory and DG Cities – the commercial arm of Digital Greenwich. SMLL, a set of routes in and around the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (site of the London 2012 Olympics), is
  • Flir takeover of Traficon and the role of thermal imaging
    February 28, 2013
    Andy Teich, president of commercial systems at Flir, discusses the growing role of thermal technology in ITS and his company’s latest high-profile acquisition with Jason Barnes. Andy Teich, Flir’s president of commercial systems, doesn’t want to talk about infrared (IR). Instead, he’d prefer, he says, to discuss ‘thermal technology’. It is, he explains, to differentiate between the imaging technologies which his company specialises in and the LED illumination of IR cameras, an altogether different beast. Fl