#4 | October 2019 | Global Edition | thefloow.com
Quarterly Magazine by The Floow
The Future of Risk: How The Floow and Direct Line Group are Working to Influence the Future of Insurance ++ PLUS The Ecosystems Beyond Insurance: An Interview with DIA’s Roger Peverelli Working in Partnership with Munich Re to Deliver Telematics’ Benefits to More Drivers
WELCOME 2
Welcome to issue 4 of Driven – The Floow’s quarterly business updates publication.
In this edition 4–5 Letter from our CEO: Aldo Monteforte 6–13
he Future of Risk: How The Floow and Direct T Line Group are Using Their Work on the MOVE_ UK Project to Influence the Future of Insurance in an Autonomous World
14–19 The Ecosystems Beyond Insurance: An Interview with DIA’s Roger Peverelli 20–25 Working in Partnership with Munich Re to Deliver Telematics’ Benefits to More Drivers 26–31
Spotlight On… FloowCoach including How We Collaborated with Direct Line Group to Bring FloowCoach to Market
32–23 September Event Summary - Connected Car Insurance USA & Cenex-LCV
We are The Floow, a leading telematics provider whose capabilities include data science excellence, cutting-edge technology and the innovative use of social sciences to deliver unique insights to our clients - insurers, auto manufacturers and governments and local authorities – and their customers. We were founded in 2012 by CEO Aldo Monteforte with the mission to make mobility safer and smarter for everyone, a mission which still drives everything we do today. Over the last two years, we have seen significant growth with our team now reaching 110 people
CEO Aldo Monteforte & CIO Dr Sam Chapman
based across the UK, US and mainland Europe, opened our first office outside the UK in Detroit and moved to a product focus and an agile way of working to ensure that we are ready and able to meet the changing needs of our clients and their customers wherever they are based. Driven is a platform for us to demonstrate our innovative nature and forward thinking in the areas of insurance, mobility and road safety. This is why, throughout each issue, we focus on how we see the future of mobility unfolding, what we are working on to ensure we are ahead of the curve and how we are working with our clients to ensure that they are ready for the challenges this fast-changing market
The Floow Ltd, The Floow Campus, Wicker Lane, Sheffield, S3 8HQ
will bring.
+44 (0) 114 270 1114
The future of mobility, and the effects it will have on
info@thefloow.com
the insurance industry, is uncertain but extremely
www.thefloow.com
important – make sure you stay one step ahead with Driven.
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Aldo Monteforte, CEO, The Floow
etter from our CEO: L Aldo Monteforte Welcome to the fourth issue of Driven, The Floow’s quarterly magazine exploring the application of telematics for safer and smarter mobility. The last few months have seen exciting progress on many fronts at The Floow as we continue to grow and develop our presence in the UK, US and further afield. In the US, we have expanded and strengthened our team with the introduction of Danny Maco and Julie Sehrt, who will be heading up our Americas function and handling program delivery in the US respectively. We’ve also launched new branding across the business, which is most visible on our refreshed website. As connected insurance enters the mainstream, all our efforts are focused on delivery excellence, developing true partnerships with our insurance clients and on designing indispensable risk management and modification tools for modern motor insurers.
Our CIO, Dr Sam Chapman, has written a piece alongside long-term client of The Floow, Dan Freedman, Director of Motor Development at Direct Line Group, about the work we have completed together as part of the MOVE_UK project and how this project will influence the future of insurance when autonomy becomes reality on our roads. We’ve also spoken to DIA’s Roger Peverelli about why Ecosystems Beyond Insurance is the overarching trend for years to come and we’ve spoken to our Chief Education Officer, Dr Lisa Dorn, who designed FloowCoach and discuss how we worked together with Direct Line Group to turn FloowCoach into an impactful and safety enhancing proposition. I hope you enjoy reading this issue of Driven. As ever, if you have any feedback or would like to start a conversation with us about any aspect of our work, please email me via info@thefloow.com.
Developing lasting partnerships and focusing on the future are key themes in this issue of Driven, as we explore our recent partnership with Munich Re and the value it offers to insurers, auto manufacturers and mobility platforms around the world.
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The Future of Risk: How The Floow and Direct Line Group are Using Their Work on the MOVE_UK Project to Influence the Future of Insurance in an Autonomous World Article written by Sam Chapman and Dan Freedman The future of mobility‌ it sounds scary, exciting and too far into the future for us to imagine. However, autonomous vehicles, electric cars and smart motorways are all already becoming a reality in 2019 due to semi-autonomous features, such as automatic braking assistance, automatic lane centering and cruise control, already being present in some of the cars on the road today. However, there is a lack of research into human behaviour on the roads and how new technologies affect driving styles and the behaviours exhibited when a driver is behind the wheel. Therefore, the ability to truly understand human behaviour is the most important element when considering the move towards full autonomy on our roads.
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the Royal Borough of Greenwich, with the aim to reduce the timescale and cost to analyse data from autonomous vehicles through live trials in realworld environments. The project finished earlier this year and the findings we gained will play an important role in how we tackle the future of mobility and the introduction of autonomous vehicles onto our roads. Throughout the duration of the MOVE_UK project, a fleet of Jaguar Land Rover vehicles were driven around the Royal Borough of Greenwich by numerous drivers covering over 100,000 miles. These vehicles were fitted with advanced sensors and recording equipment to collect a wide range of data that would support a series of analysis and that would be fundamental to gaining a better understanding of how human drivers would interact with autonomous vehicles. The data gave us an understanding of some of the issues that autonomous vehicles could face once introduced onto our roads, particularly in the time leading up to full autonomy where a mixture of fully autonomous, semi-autonomous and nonautonomous vehicles will be sharing the road. For example, a situation likely to prove difficult from a legislation, insurance and safety perspective might be:
Understanding Human Behaviour Through the MOVE_UK Project
1. How do we know who is in control - the
The Floow and Direct Line Group have both spent the last three years working on the MOVE_UK project bringing together six world-leading organisations, including Bosch, Jaguar Land Rover, TRL and
2. How do we deal with unexpected and
driver (human) or the vehicle (machine)? unanticipated human behaviours such as a pedestrian walking out in front of a vehicle?
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“Understanding the impact of autonomous vehicles on insurance is vital for us as a business and for the customers we serve...�
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Data from MOVE_UK shows the clear need for autonomous vehicles and insurance to focus on unpredictable behaviours. It also highlights the large task ahead for insurers in futureproofing their business for the changing environment by rethinking insurance policies that take into account autonomy within a vehicle. These changes become more important alongside other changing mobility factors such as the use of telematics data to understand driver behaviour, the prevalence of the sharing economy and UBI policies.
The UK Government's Ambitious Plans for Autonomy
Our work on MOVE_UK has become even more necessary as the UK government recently published their ZENZIC/UK-GOV 2030 report which includes a detailed roadmap to the introduction of autonomy on the UK’s roads by 2030. However, a lot of work needs to be done over a wide number of areas from communicating changes with the general public to the building and testing of vehicles on the UK’s roads, as well as putting in place the appropriate changes to vehicle and driver licences. One part of the roadmap which is particularly important to Direct Line Group and The Floow, concerns the insurance industry, with plans for the introduction of new legislation for insurance and underwriting to be put in place within the next five years. This is likely to have an impact on any motor insurer, who does business in the UK, and how they deliver services to their policyholders in the future. So how does an insurer prepare for these ambitious plans, which deal with many unknowns, when they are in the business of risk? Insurance has already evolved somewhat over the last 5-10 years due to the proliferation of technology companies offering new and flexible solutions, such as pay-as-you-go insurance and the use of telematics data to provide a better understanding of driver behaviours and risk. This also comes at a time when fewer people are choosing to own a vehicle or learn to drive, instead opting for alternative transport systems on offer. Therefore how can the UK’s insurers get ready for these necessary changes in such a short space of time and stay relevant in the rapidly changing market around them?
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Working in Collaboration to Ensure an Autonomous Future Which Works for Insurers As many insurers work to catch up with the changing face of insurance, mobility and technology, Direct Line Group are ahead of the game. Not only have they been out in market with telematics propositions across their brands for a number of years but we are working closely with them to ensure that they can continue to deliver an exceptional experience for their policyholders based on telematics data and behavioural scores. Using our insights from the MOVE_UK project, we are also working to understand how data can be better shared between vehicle and insurer and how the data collected from telematics - when added to vehicle data - can provide a more complete picture of a vehicle's behaviour. This has led us to build prototype scores around tailgating and dwell judgement (how good a driver is at determining if it is safe to pull out at a junction) - something we wrote about in further detail in issue 3 of Driven. Going forward, it will allow us to build more accurate insurance models, helping future insurance products and pricing be more closely linked to risk. By working collaboratively, we’re already well ahead of others in our market. We’re both heavily engaged
organisations, to develop and ensure a safe, smart and fair autonomous future for our roads. Speaking at the end of the MOVE_UK project, Director of Motor Development at Direct Line Group, Dan Freedman, commented on what it will be important for Direct Line Group to focus on going forward; “Understanding the impact of autonomous vehicles on insurance is vital for us as a business and for the customers we serve.
projects to gain further understanding in this area.
“The Connected Validation process will allow us to get a much quicker understanding on how autonomous cars will interact with other cars, pedestrians and infrastructure and will play an important role when it comes to identifying the risks that will give consumers
We believe all of this work will help us, and other
the confidence to embrace the technology.”
in pushing this topic with relevant parties, including policymakers, to ensure it is high on their agenda as well as continuing to be involved in government
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Ensuring Everyone Benefits From MOVE_UK’s Work The insights provided by The Floow, as a result of their analysis of the data collected from MOVE_UK vehicles and sensors, went on to inform recommendations for Event Data Recorder (EDRs) standards for autonomous vehicles which was made available to the UN and UK regulators for their consideration regarding future mobility. The proposal details recommendations surrounding EDRs and how they will need to meet the requirements of insurers whilst also being acceptable to vehicle manufacturers when used within autonomous vehicles. This includes recommendations surrounding minimal specifications for regulation of the data that autonomous vehicles must record in the event of an incident so authorised stakeholders can understand where liability lies when dealing with claims. We submitted this report because we want to ensure that any vehicle having some form of autonomous steering control must have an EDR capability. This is something which is typically deployed in the US but not supported by current EU regulations. Based on our work on MOVE_UK, we specified
help to ensure the standards of future insurance are high; we believe this is a clear step towards achieving this. Sam Chapman also presented this work recently at the Cenex-LCV event in Millbrook. He used this as an opportunity to talk to an audience full of major stakeholders, key manufacturers and UK government officials about the future of connected insurance and the impacts that autonomous vehicles could have on this area. It is clear that autonomous vehicles, whether fully autonomous or not, will be on our roads sooner rather than later. For insurers, they need to be prepared and able to provide viable solutions for this new age of mobility. One way of doing this relates to being able to quickly and easily make the decision of who is at fault in the event of a claim human or machine. Currently insurers have negligible data to be able to make these decisions therefore the recommendations we have made to the UN, as a result of our work on the MOVE_UK project, have been made in an attempt to change and address this huge issue for insurers.
requirements for next generation EDRs so as to provide greater understanding of extreme vehicle events encompassing autonomous control. We feel it is something which should be provided for new vehicles to ensure fair understanding of liability protecting those involved in an incident. The Floow and Direct Line Group have decided to make public this project deliverable in order to draw attention to these key recommendations which will
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“Autonomous vehicles will need to be programmed to accommodate this real-world behaviour...�
Summary There is a lot of work to be done still to ensure that the UK, and other countries, are ready for varying degrees of autonomy to be introduced onto our roads. Although, autonomy is already here in the basic form, drivers are still very much in control of the vehicle currently but this is set to change rapidly. It will be vital for vehicle manufacturers, insurers and telematics service providers to work together to provide clear insight so claims can effectively be processed and the impacts of human behaviour on autonomous vehicles can be better understood and fairly treated. However, data on its own does not
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allow for a detailed understanding of risk which is why it needs to be analysed to provide the detailed driver behaviour insights required for the future of mobility. At The Floow and Direct Line Group, we will continue to work collaboratively to gather further insights and ensure the future of mobility is safe and fair for everyone as well as continuing to support regulators to ensure we meet the UK government’s ambitious plans to have autonomous vehicles on our roads by 2030.
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Speaking about the MOVE_UK project, Chief Innovation Officer at The Floow, Dr Sam Chapman, said; “Real world experience counts for a lot and we’ve discovered that [through MOVE_UK research], not unexpectedly, humans do not drive to the letter of the law - people speed, cut each other up and make all manner of mistakes.
behaviour. This will be a critical factor to consider when planning for autonomous mobility in the future and determining how risk is managed.”
“Their interpretation of hazards and safety is markedly different than the Highway Code would have you expect. Autonomous vehicles will need to be programmed to accommodate this real-world
To find out more about the MOVE_UK project, visit their website and you can read more about Sam’s talk at Cenex-LCV in this issue of Driven or on The Floow’s blog.
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Ecosystems Beyond Insurance: An Interview with Roger Peverelli from Digital Insurance Agenda
The evolution of technology has created an uncertain future for insurers and contributed to the ever-changing needs of insurance customers. It has also created ecosystems beyond insurance which allow insurers to tap into these customer needs to develop services which address their requirements. With over 20 years experience in strategy and digital innovation as well as advisory positions at insurance start-ups and fintech companies, Roger Peverelli is well placed to discuss these ecosystems and the impacts they are likely to have on the future of insurance. Alongside Reggy de Feniks, Roger has built Digital Insurance Agenda (DIA), to accelerate innovation by connecting insurers with insurtech leaders through their leading conferences which take place across the world. We recently spoke to Roger to get his take on the future of insurance and why he thinks ecosystems beyond insurance are the overarching trend for years to come.
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Roger Peverelli
Why do you believe that ‘ecosystems beyond insurance’ is the overarching trend for years to come? Roger Peverelli: “When people wake up in the morning, their first thought is not usually their car insurance. They think about how to get to work, how to drop off their kids at school… the real customer need is mobility. More and more insurers are realising that the most effective way to reach customers is to be part of relevant platforms and ecosystems. ‘Ecosystems beyond insurance’ is about being present and active in the platforms where people go to solve the real challenges they have in life. Not only platforms around home, mobility, work and health but also, around important life events such as study, marriage, divorce and retirement - moments that include making important financial and risk decisions.”
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“Ecosystems beyond insurance’ is about being present and active in the platforms where people go to solve the real challenges they have in life.” DRIVEN MAGAZINE
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to continue improving and innovating their offering to their customers – with many new and relevant services. There is ample research which shows that safety features and services are increasingly important to drivers and car owners.” How do we ensure that insurers take other industries, e.g. telematics providers, into account and work with them to provide the best solutions for customers? RP: “Although more and more insurers are convinced that ‘ecosystems beyond insurance’ is the overarching trend for years to come, many of them are still figuring out the right strategy to tap into this trend. They also need to become aware that if
Why is thinking about mobility in the wider sense so important for motor insurers? RP: “The Future of Motor Insurance is set by the Future of Mobility. Solving the real needs behind the insurance need usually requires more than insurance. Ecosystem thinking is about ‘services beyond covers’. New value-added services increase the relevancy of a brand to customers - opening up new revenue streams and business models.”
you want to be a relevant partner in an ecosystem, you need to work with other organisations that are already playing a role there, such as the many new and innovative tech companies including telematics providers, who can play a pivotal role in creating new value-added services.”
What do you see as most important for insurers to focus on: customer engagement, understanding driver behaviour or preparing for new technologies? RP: “There is no choice - they need to prepare for an era with autonomous vehicles however it will probably take a few years before the majority of cars on the road are self-driving. Insurers will need
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What’s the state of play of insurers embracing insurtechs in their ecosystems? RP: “When we meet with insurance executives to discuss ‘the state of innovation’, quite a few say they worry. They are all on the same page with regards to how important insurtechs are for accelerating digital transformation and innovation but they are humble when we discuss the scale on which these new solutions are being used inside their organisation but also with regards to visibility in the market. In spite of all the investment, pilots and proof of concepts with insurtechs; they say the impact on the top line and bottom line is still limited, this is an issue that we really need to tackle.” Who are some of the other contributors to this new ecosystem? RP: “All players across mobility - from those part of the traditional insurance value chain e.g. body shops and claims data providers who are creating new services, to the more obvious organisations which includes car manufacturers, car tech providers and mobility solutions providers e.g. ride sharing services and public transportation.” In your original article, you talk about the third wave of insurtech - can you map insurtech’s history and where you think it could be going? RP: “Since the first edition of DIA, three years ago, we’ve seen how the essence of ‘insurtech’ has evolved. The 300 insurtechs we’ve had on stage so far, and the 2,500 we have in our database, give us a pretty good picture of what has changed but also how things will develop in the coming years.
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Looking back and ahead, we distinguish four waves of insurtech with each wave driving the future of insurance in a new direction: •
The First Wave: The ‘Challengers’ - In 2016, ‘insurtech’ mostly meant new entrants who were out there to attack the established order
•
The Second Wave: The ‘Enablers’ - The challengers created a sense of urgency which fueled this second wave. Among the 2,500 young tech companies in our database, ~80% are enablers - they focus on assisting established carriers to improve or renew specific parts of the value chain or help them to create new ones
•
The Third Wave: The ‘Ecosystem Partners’ These do not necessarily need to have their roots in insurance. When sector boundaries blur, it becomes totally irrelevant if a tech company is a ‘genuine insurtech’ as every company that improves the value proposition is interesting to partner with
We believe there is already a Fourth Wave on its way. New technologies are critical to reposition the industry as more customer-centric but they also offer carriers the opportunity to increase their social and economic impact and reboot themselves as a force for good. We see more and more insurtechs applying new technologies for significant social and economic impact such as improving safe driving.”
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The opportunity offered by insurtechs and
4. Continuous dialogue - An open two-way
being adopted by insurers, pre-supposes that
conversation is indispensable. This should
customers want a relationship with their insurer.
not only be focused on specific customer
Do you sense a change in these relationships due
feedback but also, on getting to know more
to digital technology?
about customers
RP: “Ample research shows many consumers are not
5. Trust and respect - Willingness to have
at all interested in a relationship with their insurer.
a continuous dialogue and exchange
The benefits of such relationships are not clear and
information and knowledge will only arise
the truth is many financial institutions have not even
where there is mutual trust and respect
started thinking about it themselves or what kind of relationship they strive for.
Nurturing these five ingredients is a continuous process. It is about closing the gap between
In our latest book, ‘Reinventing Customer
insurer and customer, moving from transaction
Engagement’ we’ve revealed five key ingredients for
to interaction, from one-way communication
the relationship between companies and customers:
to dialogue and turning this information into
1. Value for both - The relationship should be mutually beneficial. It is only effective if it anticipates the true needs of customers
actions. We also see new digital technologies allowing insurers to significantly improve on all five ingredients, if applied correctly.”
whilst simultaneously creating value for
Who might own the customer relationship in an
the business
era of connected vehicles and changing mobility?
2. Information exchange - Value can only
RP: “The question should be ‘what role should
be created if both parties are willing to
insurers play in an ecosystem?’ When we ask the
share information and knowledge. The
opinions of insurance executives on this, they vary
more knowledge shared, the more value a
from ‘being in control’ to ‘just being one of the
company is able to create for its customers
nodes’. It’s hard to come up with an answer that
and the more meaningful the relationship
applies to all insurers but some, such as Allianz with
can become
Abracar and Baloise with Mobly, are definitely taking
3. Influence and alignment - The insurer
fate into their own hands.”
really has to listen to its customers and it
Find out more about DIA and Roger’s work on
is even more important to act on what it
the DIA website or follow them on Twitter -
hears and learns
@TheDIACommunity
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Working in Partnership with Munich Re to Deliver Telematics’ Benefits to More Drivers Article written by Matt Chalk
Earlier this year, The Floow announced our global partnership with Munich Re, one of the world’s leading reinsurers, allowing us to work together to provide The Floow’s telematics solutions and their benefits to Munich Re’s worldwide client base. The combination of The Floow’s data collection, refinery and scoring solutions, alongside our product portfolio which includes our awardwinning, quick-to-deploy FloowDrive solution, with Munich Re’s insurance product and actuarial expertise will strengthen their connected insurance consulting offering to deliver a superior solution for their insurance clients around the world. Speaking about our partnership, Head of Motor Consulting at Munich Re, Sabine Ottmann, said; “We see enormous appetite for the development of usage-based insurance propositions by our clients around the world… The underpinning capabilities have to be right, and we’ve carefully selected The Floow as our partner because we believe in the quality of their offer. Together we will deliver a best in class value proposition to our clients.”
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A True Partnership At The Floow, we are passionate about creating true partnerships with our clients and we see our collaboration with Munich Re not as a relationship between client and provider, but rather as a partnership which offers true value to both parties. As a result, we’ve worked closely with Munich Re to ensure we understand not only the market they work in but also the vast number of territories their business covers. By drawing on the expertise we have gained from working across the globe, we can ensure that the products we deliver for each of Munich Re’s clients is tailored to the geography they are based in as well as the market they serve. With this partnership, we combine our technical telematics capabilities with Munich Re’s expertise in connected insurance product development, big data and actuarial know-how driven by Munich Re Global Consulting. Eventually, this will become a strong offer to insurers, auto manufacturers and even mobility platforms around the world, allowing them to introduce a telematics solution to their proposition. We also believe in the importance of creating a two-way conversation between client and provider to ensure that feedback, whether new ideas or issues that need addressing, are heard, discussed and actioned appropriately, whether that involves providing a solution or developing an idea into a workable capability. Munich Re has valuable insights into insurance operations around the globe and we use this information to enhance our products accordingly and in the medium to long-term, we want to be able to strategically co-create new
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connected car products as the future of mobility continues to develop at a rapid pace.
Making Telematics Accessible Through our partnership with Munich Re, it allows us to get even closer to our goal of making telematics truly accessible for everyone. Last year when we released our FloowDrive and FloowFleet solutions, we saw these as the catalyst for making telematics more accessible for all insurers so the benefits of telematics could be felt across the market. FloowDrive and FloowFleet have allowed us to increase our client portfolio over the last 12 months, empowering us to focus on growing our capabilities and ensuring that we work more productively by moving to an agile development methodology. This allows our clients, including Munich Re and their customers, to reap rewards as we aim to continue meeting and exceeding client requirements as they continue to prepare for the future of mobility.
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As Munich Re have a wide and varying reach across the insurance market, our accessible and robust suite of solutions can be offered to more insurers, with the backing of a partner who understands and champions our capabilities. Plus, Munich Re’s years of experience in this area adds tremendous value for the insurer and their proposition, helping them to create the most valuable solution from the moment development starts through to launch and beyond. Furthermore, the set-up allows our customers to include the connected insurance solution into their reinsurance agreements which can facilitate the first step into the connected insurance world. With FloowDrive and FloowFleet, they are not only quick-to-market, customisable and robust solutions but they also combine The Floow’s seven years of telematics experience within one white-label platform. This includes our scoring and actuarial experience, excellence in technology and social science integration, all packaged into products which are designed to fit the business requirements of any insurer. The first insurance clients that we have taken on board through our partnership with Munich Re are primary insurers in Germany and South Africa. With the German insurer, we are developing a proposition aimed at young drivers under 25, to collect journey data across a number of different driving elements which is then analysed to deliver scores providing the client and their customers with insights into driver behaviour behind the wheel. This will help the client to predict policy prices more accurately and provide their policyholders with the opportunity to lower the cost of their insurance
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premium by making improvements to their driving behaviour and lowering their risk profile. The beauty of FloowDrive lies in the ability to create a solution such as this which is aimed at a specific demographic and has been developed and released to market within a number of weeks, rather than the 6-9 months it takes to build a custom solution, whilst allowing the client to test and learn with their proposition, across their target market.
A Flexible Productised Approach to Telematics Due to the vastness of Munich Re’s client base, a flexible approach was required to ensure that, as their telematics partner, we could provide the right solution for the varying and ever-changing needs of their insurance clients. As a result, the suite of solutions we offer to Munich Re’s customers span smartphone-as-a-sensor and device-agnostic integration enabling propositions to be built across both personal and commercial lines.
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We have also made our entire product portfolio available to Munich Re, allowing insurers to add our FloowScore capabilities into FloowDrive and FloowFleet so they can develop their own scoring IP by training their claims data against our algorithm. There is also the opportunity to add optional modules, such as our Rewards programme, which can help develop and improve customer engagement and the user experience for an insurer’s policyholders when launching their telematics and connected insurance propositions. By working alongside Munich Re and the insurance client, we ensure that the solution we create takes the required capabilities and packages them in a way which fulfils their business needs and is unique to their requirements, whether that focuses on language and location, the target market demographics or the customer experience delivered by the proposition. By picking and choosing the capabilities which are right for them and customising areas such as branding, language and geographical requirements, it makes it easier to create a proposition which seamlessly fits into the insurers business. It also makes it easier to get out to market quickly so they can gain, or retain, competitive advantage which is extremely important as the insurance market continues to grow and develop so quickly. For insurers, whether they are a start-up or a large legacy organisation, they can trust The Floow and Munich Re to work with them and use our extensive skills and expertise to make developing and launching a telematics proposition in their marketplace quick and simple.
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“Munich Re is an excellent partner for us to work with... We’re excited by the opportunities this partnership will bring”
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The Future of Partnerships At The Floow, we are excited to see where our collaboration with Munich Re will take us over the coming years. They are as committed and excited as we are about connected insurance and ensuring its benefits can be felt across the market, from their insurance clients through to the drivers who will be interacting with these propositions and using telematics as a way of improving their driving or obtaining a more affordable quote. By listening to them and their clients, we can ensure that the collaboration between The Floow and Munich Re remains one of true partnership where we are working in sync towards the common goal of making connected insurance and its benefits more accessible for all, opening up the market and allowing us to continue our work towards fulfilling our mission of making mobility safer and smarter for everyone. The Floow’s Chief Operating Officer, David James, has previously expressed his thoughts on our partnership with Munich Re; “Munich Re is an excellent partner for us to work with and we’re confident that they will help us to extend our reach and bring the power and benefits of telematics to many more insurers and their customers worldwide… We’re excited by the opportunities that this partnership will bring and are already engaged in new projects in the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, Asia and mainland Europe.” To find out more about The Floow’s partnership with Munich Re, you can check out the initial press announcement.
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Spotlight on…
FloowCoach Article written by Charlotte Pearson
The Floow’s Driver Coaching team work on FloowCoach, our telephone-based coaching programme, which combines our excellence in telematics monitoring and scoring with social science techniques to improve driver behaviour and reduce some of the 1.25 million accidents and deaths which occur on our roads every year. Our highly trained behavioural coaches have been expertly trained to deliver FloowCoach to the bottom 10-20% of drivers as they represent an increased risk of making a claim during the lifetime of the policy. Since launching in October 2015, we have worked with thousands of drivers to help them understand and improve their behaviour on the road. Our latest research shows that for every 100 drivers who complete FloowCoach, 13 accidents are avoided compared to standard feedback mechanisms. At The Floow, we see FloowCoach as extremely important to help us to deliver on our mission to make mobility safer and smarter for everyone and provide further context to the insights delivered to our insurance clients, and their policyholders, by our scoring algorithm through journey scores and driver behaviour information presented through smartphone apps and our insurer management portal.
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How FloowCoach Started and Where It Is Going We spoke to Dr Lisa Dorn, Chief Education Officer at The Floow and Associate Professor of Driver Behaviour at Cranfield University, who developed FloowCoach to find out more about the origins of the programme and where she sees it going in the future. How did you get involved with The Floow and building FloowCoach? I first became involved with The Floow in 2012 when Aldo heard about my work to improve road safety and how to influence driver behaviour. I became a co-founder of the company and immediately started working with the UK’s largest personal motor insurer, Direct Line Group. As part of our partnership with Direct Line Group, they expressed concerns about drivers on their books with the poorest scores. Based on our data, we knew that these drivers were significantly more likely to be involved in a crash and we collectively agreed to do something to keep these drivers as safe as possible. As Chief Education Officer, my role is to provide The Floow’s feedback, educational and driver behavioural content so Direct Line Group naturally turned to me to design an intervention to improve their scores.
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“We can help drive change that will see telematics fully integrated within the UK motor market.”
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Where did the idea for the programme
have affected positive change in the way drivers
come from?
think about their risk and keeping them safe beyond
As an academic working in driver behaviour since 1988, I have a good understanding of a range of behavioural interventions and how they should be structured and implemented for maximum effectiveness. I started by deep diving into academic literature to design FloowCoach based on evidence. I found many studies showing that cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) has been successfully deployed to change driving behaviour based on changing driver perceptions and responses to traffic related problems. Coaching using CBT encourages drivers
the programme. How far has FloowCoach come in the last 4 years? Since its launch, we’ve been delivering FloowCoach via a number of telephone-based coaching sessions delivered by highly-trained behavioural coaches. In that time, FloowCoach has grown from strength to strength with more insurers requesting this service for their policyholders every year. Several behavioural coaches have now joined The Floow to cope with the increasing volume of drivers going through the programme. This year, we are
to reflect on their decisions and develop goals for
excited that FloowCoach has been set up in the US
safer responses.
for the first time as major US insurers are coming
It was also important to incorporate behaviour
on board.
change techniques within FloowCoach as the active
How do you see FloowCoach progressing in
ingredients for influencing behaviour. During the
the future?
review process, I found research showing that using the telephone as the mode for delivering coaching was proven to be effective, even for drivers who had committed traffic offences. This evidence base helped me feel confident in our abilities to design and deliver FloowCoach to improve scores for high-risk drivers. Our analysis shows that for every 100 drivers in the lowestscoring decile who have completed FloowCoach, 13 accidents are avoided compared to standard
As part of our mission to make mobility safer and smarter for everyone, we are currently reviewing how we incorporate some of the key behaviour change techniques within our apps by taking learning points directly from FloowCoach. We have the ability to investigate which levers within FloowCoach have the strongest influence on driver behaviour by analysing what impact they have on driver scores. We can then digitize these features
feedback mechanisms.
within an app and make it available to all drivers.
Graduates also tend to continue improving
The app has a more widespread impact on all
incrementally after completing the programme and
drivers, not just the bottom decile, so all our clients
rarely revert to previous score levels based on our
and their policyholders can all benefit from our
follow-up evidence. This is fantastic as it shows we
technology for safer, smarter driving.
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The Perspective of Our Coaches We spoke to Charlotte Alleway and Taryn Garrison, driver coaches at The Floow, based in the UK and the US respectively, to find out more about what they do, how they support our clients and what makes a good FloowCoach. How do you support our clients - and their customers? Charlotte: We support our clients by providing coaching over the phone to their customers with the aim of improving their driving scores. This is done by using behavioural change techniques to help influence behavioural change, to help improve road safety and prevent claims as well as providing good
experienced our strong community firsthand and I am comfortable seeking guidance from anyone as everyone is motivated to teach what they know as well as eager to learn in new situations. What has been your proudest moment since joining The Floow? C: Exceeding our yearly target as a team before the year has even ended, my first year working for The Floow, which I'm pretty proud of! T: I’ve only been at The Floow for about two months, so I’m admittedly still catching on, but I'm proud to have learned enough to be able to contribute to FloowCoach’s latest endeavours.
customer service.
What does it take to make a good FloowCoach?
Taryn: As a FloowCoach, I support our insurance
C: Good communication and listening skills so our
clients and their customers by providing customers
coaching is carried out to a high standard allowing
with telematics support. I monitor customer data
goals to be set at the end of each call.
and present it to them in a way they can understand to help them improve driving behaviours. Our main goal is to promote safe driving practices by encouraging a sense of awareness about a driver’s driving style with our customers.
T: So far, the training starts the process but the rest seems to come with experience and learning from different calls. I believe if you are committed to being of service to others then you can excel in this position. It takes motivation and putting goals in
Why do you love working for The Floow?
place to make the roads a safer place for everyone.
C: It's great to work for a company who is so
Working with Direct Line Group to Deliver FloowCoach to the Market
passionate about what they do, as well as making sure that the team feels valued and important to its success.
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newest member of the FloowCoach team, I have
Direct Line Group worked extremely closely with The Floow’s team to implement the FloowCoach
T: I love that The Floow stays true to its mission with
programme into their telematics insurance
collaboration and effective communication between
proposition and bring it to market as a beneficial
all teams extremely important. Although I am the
addition for their customers.
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The partnership was extremely collaborative which was fundamental to the development of the proposition and allowing it to become a viable commercial and CSR option for their business. The three areas where FloowCoach would be considered useful for Direct Line Group were: •
To help their policyholders understand their driving behaviour
•
To improve customer loyalty and offer a great customer experience
•
To support their CSR agenda aligning to young driver safety and saving lives
They launched FloowCoach on their DrivePlus brand in October 2015 and further extended the programme to include their other brands in 2017. Direct Line Group see FloowCoach as an opportunity to actively engage the highest risk drivers on their book (based on their scores) to help them improve their scores and driver risk profile. Earlier this year, Annette Fox, Head of Telematics at Direct Line Group, commented, “Working in partnership with The Floow has allowed us both to gain great insights and offer something truly beneficial to our policyholders. “We know that through data we will have a much better understanding of risk which will not only enable us to offer better premiums to young drivers, but we can help educate, inform and improve road safety overall. It is Direct Line Group’s ambition to be a leading telematics insurance provider and we are confident that working with The Floow, we can help drive change that will see telematics fully integrated within the UK motor market.”
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Events Summary: Connected Car Insurance, Chicago and Cenex-LCV
Connected Car Insurance, Chicago USA On 4th and 5th September, some of The Floow’s team attended the Connected Car Insurance USA conference at the Radisson Blu Aqua in Chicago. Focusing specifically on telematics for the US insurance sector, it brings together over 130 insurance carriers and 200+ leading technology vendors to discuss where connected vehicles, telematics, big data and AI meets auto insurance. It provides the perfect opportunity to speak with insurers, gain further understanding around the state of the market and listen to customer needs directly, so we can continue to make informed decisions regarding our product development. It was also a great opportunity to introduce the latest member of The Floow’s US team, Danny Maco, to the community as our SVP and General Manager for the Americas. Having spent a number of years leading telematics programmes in the insurance industry, Danny is particularly sensitive to addressing issues currently affecting insurers, because not so long ago, they were the problems affecting him daily.
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The conference was an opportunity to talk about the partnerships we’ve developed in the US by working collaboratively alongside our partners, since opening our Detroit office in 2017. This was exemplified by the signing of our latest client, Eikos - a leading broker based in Mexico, further growing our reach and name throughout the Americas. We also hosted a dinner for some of our friends and partners at the residence of John Saville, the UK Consul General, where as well as great food and wonderful views, our guests enjoyed an inspiring talk on the subjects of user engagement and behavioural design from Gabe Zichermann, a public speaker and author of works including The Gamification Revolution. To find out more about our time at Connected Car Insurance Chicago, check out our blog.
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Cenex-LCV, Millbrook UK At the beginning of September, The Floow’s CIO and Co-Founder, Sam Chapman, attended Cenex-LCV in Millbrook to talk about the future of connected insurance and the impacts autonomous vehicles could have on this area. Cenex-LCV is the UK’s premier low carbon vehicle and connected autonomous mobility conference and on the second day, Sam delivered a talk on ‘Insurance in a Connected and Autonomous World’ which focused on what is needed to make connected insurance a reality in the autonomous and assistive car world. It’s a subject we’ve focused on closely through our involvement in MOVE_UK over the last three years as we worked to understand the timescale and cost of introducing autonomous vehicles onto our roads through live trials in real world environments. This project gave us a unique insight into risk, data potentials and the future of insurance when autonomy forms part of the risk profile. We have discussed this subject further in our Future of Risk piece earlier in the magazine, where Sam and Dan Freedman, Director of Motor Development at Direct Line Group, provide their take on how the insurance market can prepare for the introduction of autonomous vehicles. To find out more about our time at Cenex-LCV, check out our blog and you can read the reports from each phase of the MOVE_UK project on their website.
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Upcoming Events As we get to the end of 2019, we are focusing on some big industry events across Europe and the US. Here’s where we will be over the coming months:
The Floow at Insurance Innovators 13th - 14th November 2019, London On 13th and 14th November, The Floow’s team will be attending the Insurance Innovators conference at London’s QEII Centre. This annual event is Europe’s leading insurance conference where insurers and insurtechs come together to challenge the traditional world of insurance. The Floow’s Managing Director: EMEA Sales, Matt Chalk, will be speaking on the main stage about ‘The Power of Distraction’ and how it is possible to measure this important risk factor to increase profitability. Matt’s talk takes place on Wednesday 13th at 10:05 and you’ll be able to find The Floow’s team on stand 2 where they will be happy to talk more about the power of distraction or speak to you about our solutions. Attendees from The Floow: Claire Sargeant Managing Director: Client Development, EMEA | Aldo Monteforte - CEO and Founder | Matt Chalk - Managing Director: EMEA Sales | George Berekos - Sales Director | Jonathan Smith - Pricing and Underwriting Director
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The Floow at Digital Insurance Agenda 20th - 21st November 2019, Munich The Floow’s team are attending Digital Insurance Agenda (DIA) in Munich on 20th and 21st November. As one of the leading conferences in Europe, DIA offers something different from the ordinary aiming to accelerate innovation by connecting insurers with insurtech leaders. Stop by The Floow’s booth to speak to a member of our team about how our telematics solutions can work for your business. Attendees from The Floow: Claire Sargeant Managing Director: Client Development, EMEA | Matt Chalk - Managing Director: EMEA Sales | George Berekos - Sales Director | Jonathan Smith - Pricing and Underwriting Director | Zoe Sullivan - Client Development Director | Elisabetta Pizzini Client Development Director
Other Events The Floow’s Team Are Attending: Insurance Nexus Connected Insurance Summit: 20th - 21st November 2019, Chicago IL If you are attending any of these events then we hope to see you there! For more information about our products and services, email us at info@thefloow.com
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The Floow Ltd The Floow Campus, Wicker Lane, Sheffield, S3 8HQ +44 (0) 114 270 1114 The Floow North America 20300 Superior Rd. Suite 250 Taylor, MI 48180 USA +1 855 447 9252 info@thefloow.com www.thefloow.com
Quarterly Magazine by The Floow
