The Floow at Connected Car Insurance, USA

The Floow at Connected Car Insurance USA, Chicago

Article written by Nathan George

The Floow team enjoyed another busy and exciting week at this year’s Connected Car Insurance USA conference and exhibition back in September, which took place in Chicago. The annual event brought together over 130 insurers, automakers and leading connected car experts to discuss next generation insurance products and services, with telematics at the cornerstone of the conversation.

We spent the entire show meeting with both existing partners and new prospects to discuss our world-leading telematics solutions.

Distracted Driving and Driver Scoring

At the conference, there was a general recognition that the most significant predictor of risk is distracted driving, which has led to a definite shift towards using smartphones as a sensor; if you want the most powerful predictor of driving risk, you have to be able to capture distracted driving.

Our class-leading scoring system uses distraction as one of the five key components we monitor to create an overall driver risk score. At The Floow, we take this one step further; not only do we capture the behavioral data around distracted driving, we contextually enrich it, which means we can not only predict risk, we can reduce it, through both driver feedback or using our proprietary coaching program, FloowCoach.

Data Collection Using Smartphones and Bluetooth Beacons

As the use of smartphones continues to grow, so does interest in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology and using video to leverage telematics data. With over 90% of bluetooth enabled smartphones already supporting BLE, its applications for car sharing and asset tracking are likely to see similar growth.

With so much new technology allowing telematics to have an even greater benefit to insurers, it’s clear they are now starting to think about enterprise-wide telematics strategies to leverage the learnings across both personal and commercial lines insurance.

Building IP Around Driver Scoring

Unlike other providers, The Floow allows our partners to build upon our trusted scoring and technology platform to create their own IP.

This approach to partnership has proven very attractive to the companies we work with, enabling them to differentiate and innovate within their markets...and it’s completely unique to the industry!

Crash Detection & Notification

Another notable trend we observed was related to helping insurers tackle claims as part of the insurance telematics offer. There was a strong interest and curiosity in connected claims and First Notification of Loss. This is an area where we’re lazer focused and I’m excited about the forthcoming solutions we’ll bring to market in the coming weeks.

The Growth of Commercial Lines Insurance Telematics

Finally, there was reinforcement of the commercial automotive need for quality telematics solutions to help them buck the trend they are experiencing in underwriting losses. This is something that The Floow has been working towards with our recently launched FloowFleet product; a cost effective, turn-key risk management platform aimed at small fleets of up to 25 vehicles. You can learn more about FloowFleet on page 13.

In this fast-evolving market, our insurance partners and prospects shared with us their opinion of how The Floow continues to lead the way in developing pioneering telematics products and services that meet their increasingly challenging and sophisticated needs and those of their policyholders.

A high-point of the overall event for us was when we were joined by our friends and partners at the residence of John Saville - the UK Consul General - for dinner. The food was great, the views (when the weather cooperated) were spectacular and the conversation and company were amazing. We will most likely make this an annual event.

We look forward to developing our client relationships by effectively managing their risk while delivering a first-class user experience for their policyholders in an ever changing insurance market.