#2 | March 2019 | US Edition | thefloow.com
Quarterly Magazine by The Floow
The Future of Risk: The Impacts of New Technology ++ PLUS How Long-Term Partnerships Can Deliver Significant Benefits to Insurers and Their Policyholders Driving Actuarial Innovation with Telematics
The Floow’s Vision and Strategic Direction
Photo by Olav Tvedt on Unsplash
The Floow at the Consumer Telematics Show, Las Vegas
WELCOME 2
Welcome to Driven, The Floow’s quarterly business updates publication for the US market.
In this edition 4 - 5 Letter from our CEO: Aldo Monteforte 6 - 15 The Future of Risk: The Impacts of New Technology written by Dr Sam Chapman 16 - 19 How Long-Term Partnerships Can Deliver Significant Benefits to Insurers and Their Policyholders written by Claire Sargeant 20 - 29 Driving Actuarial Innovation with Telematics written by Andy Goldby 30 - 31 The Floow at the Consumer Telematics Show, Las Vegas written by John Kramer 32 - 33 The Floow at dig-in 2019 34 - 39 Meet our US Team Who Are Working to Deliver Success with Telematics Across the Market 40 - 45 The Floow’s Vision and Strategic Direction written by Aldo Monteforte
We are The Floow, a leading telematics service provider delivering solutions to insurance companies, auto manufacturers and fleet operators worldwide. Our capabilities comprise of excellence in data science, cutting-edge technology and the innovative use of social science to provide unique safety insights to the benefit of our partners and their policyholders. We were founded in 2012 by CEO Aldo Monteforte, CIO Dr Sam Chapman and Paul Ridgway with the mission to make mobility safer and smarter for everyone, a mission which still drives everything we do today. Over the last
CEO Aldo Monteforte & CIO Dr Sam Chapman
two years, we have seen significant growth and opened our first office outside the UK in Detroit as we continue to showcase our commitment to the US market. With Driven, we want to showcase not only our new products and the industry events that we will be attending but to use this as a platform to demonstrate our innovative nature and forward thinking in the areas of insurance, mobility and road safety. This is why we will be focusing heavily on how we see the future of mobility
The Floow North America
unfolding, what we are working on to ensure we
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are ahead of the curve and how we are working with our partners to make sure they are ready
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for the challenges this fast-changing market will
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bring.
info@thefloow.com
The future of mobility and insurance is uncertain
www.thefloow.com
but extremely important, make sure you’re one step ahead with Driven.
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Aldo Monteforte, CEO, The Floow
etter from our CEO: L Aldo Monteforte Welcome to the Spring edition of Driven, our quarterly magazine which aims to encompass insights, ideas, best practices and innovation in insurance telematics. We had some great feedback about our first issue so this time around we wanted to focus on some of the areas you told us you’d like to hear more about. Amongst the articles you’ll read include one from Dr Sam Chapman, my co-founder here at The Floow and our Chief Innovation Officer. Sam talks about the future of mobility and how telematics-based insights are informing a new paradigm when it comes to risk pricing and modelling, and will enable a future which could fully integrate autonomous mobility. Whilst some of these changes represent the potential for complex disruption to our insurance partners, others will create opportunity for differentiation. It’s this angle that Andy Goldby, our Chief Actuary, picks up on with regards to how telematics can be the basis for better business outcomes, better customer insights and better partnership - all built upon a platform of better, more sophisticated scores.
These are issues that the majority of our partners are interested in, and all of them are keen to learn from our experiences of working with industry peers to address them. It’s in that spirit that this issue of Driven also includes an article reflecting on the 2 billion+ miles that we’ve scored during more than five years of working with Direct Line Group in the UK. The fruits of that relationship include more than £50 million of savings achieved for young drivers benefitting from telematics insurance policies - an excellent customer-centric outcome. These truly are exciting times and I believe that there’s never been a better time to be part of and contributing to the transformation of the insurance industry to make mobility safer and smarter for everyone. I hope that you enjoy reading Driven! Until next time…
Future mobility and scoring sophistication are two of the six pillars of strategic focus that we’re centering our efforts around here at The Floow. In my article for Driven, I talk about these alongside four others: mobile-first, the power of behavioral conditioning, a touchless claims experience and OEM data integration.
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The Future of Risk: The Impacts of New Technology Article written by Dr Sam Chapman
With 1.3 million fatalities occurring on the world’s roads every year, and an estimated 60 million receiving serious injuries, road risk is fundamentally one of the biggest impacts on our wellbeing. In fact, road risk causes at least 22 times as many fatalities as warfare. Despite these horrific figures, the situation used to be a lot worse. As new awareness, regulation and safer systems have been adopted the risks have continued to decrease over time. Add to that, an ever upward increase in vehicle miles travelled, and this is a very positive trend.
Photo by Puria Berenji on Unsplash
However, a closer look at more recent history highlights a decline in the rate of this risk reduction, with gains levelling off at the same time technology is still advancing.
In order to understand these impacts, it is vital to understand how risk is mitigated.
So as we continue to add new technologies, what will be the future effect on risk? Investigations in this area by The Floow have led to numerous world leading research projects, for example the MOVE_UK project. MOVE_UK brings together world leading organisations to investigate the impact of new vehicle technologies upon risk. This aims to better
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understand emerging changes and the risk they may alter. The work looks to evolve regulation and data usage to decrease the impacts of emergent risk from new technology.
The risk of any vehicle travelling at speed is inherently high for both vehicles and people in the surrounding area. However over the many years of mobility numerous mitigations have been evolved to reduce underlying risks. Although mitigations are numerous they can be broadly grouped into three key areas that collectively work to reduce risks during travel: •
Vehicle safety
•
Infrastructure safety
•
Behavioral safety
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Photo by Per Lööv on Unsplash
With 1.3 million fatalities occurring on the world’s roads every year, and an estimated 60 million receiving serious injuries, road risk is fundamentally one of the biggest impacts on our wellbeing.
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Whilst accidents can only occur where all
(In the US, this gives a 39% decline in reported
mitigations fail, this does not mean that this will
rear end collisions in vehicles fitted with this
always happen, rather that this is where the
technology).
risk lies. However, each mitigation influences each other in a complex and changing picture of risk and therefore changes made may have unpredictable impacts and unwanted side effects. For example, a project called the Munich taxi
Vehicle safety
driver study looked at the behavioral impact of
Vehicle risk mitigations relate to three key areas:
the introduction of ABS. Researchers studied
1) Ensuring a safe operational fleet
collision rates and observed the driving behavior of taxi drivers with and without ABS. They found there was no significant difference in their collision rates – in fact, the rate for drivers of ABS-
This includes mandated vehicle checks, such as the MOT in the UK, the vehicle recall process, type approval processes and NCAP crash safety
equipped vehicles was slightly higher than the
rating.
rate for those without ABS.
Each of these play a crucial part in keeping risk
The study revealed that the drivers with ABS-
to a minimum. However, with the ever changing
equipped vehicles braked harder, cornered more sharply, left less space in front of them, and failed to maintain lane positioning and merge with other traffic in a safe manner. This was likely to be due to the drivers feeling safer and therefore taking more risks. Similar findings were reported by Sagberg et al (1997) taxis with ABS had significantly shorter headways than taxis
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Impact of new technologies on mitigations
world of technology, none can ever be fully effective. Vehicle checks on more advanced cars need to become more complex and cannot be undertaken during a ‘quick check’. A future approach therefore is to place increasing reliance upon direct digital feedback from within
without ABS. These kinds of studies show that
the vehicles. Future systems can expect to have
human responses to technology aren’t always
active management of certain error codes to
straightforward.
maintain safety.
However, to take this further beyond this one
A similar approach is being taken by OEM’s to
study on ABS is, in general, a good thing, as
reduce the costs of vehicle recall by shifting
although some advances can have potentially
instead to OTA updates for the controlling
negative or negligible impacts others are very
software to mitigate non-mechanical faults.
positive. For instance passive safety systems
However, such updates still have little clear
such as Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB)
mandated process raising the potential of both
offer positive improvements in incident reduction
wanted and unwanted risk changes to occur.
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Type approval processes help to ensure that new vehicles meet evolving safety regulations ensuring safe engineering practice is followed to the letter of regulations. However, these processes are tested on complete systems in known testing, meaning OEM design ensures minimum requirements are met, and therefore testing may not cover wider test cases beyond those mandated.
but regulation is likely to add in predetermined
ISO26262 provides a framework that advances
process has thus far however only tested 10
this testing with a focus on new vehicle technologies. This approach however still uses scenario testing methodology. It would be unknown what happens with systems beyond those tests performed. This standard looks set to form a strong part of new automation testing
test cases to ensure safer operation of new technologies. NCAP crash safety testing for new vehicles provides a consumer with a visible safety rating for vehicles. Recently this approach has evolved into testing the first level 2 autonomous systems to provide feedback to purchasers on the safety of systems in these new vehicles. Currently this vehicles. Nonetheless, it is clear that NCAP aims to further extend testing into new technologies. As such they have a clear roadmap matching to monitor emerging risks and vital components of safer vehicles. These additional review aspects will, by 2020, encompass: •
Driver Monitoring
•
Automatic Emergency Braking
•
Automatic Emergency Steering
•
Whiplash and rear end impact protection
•
Rescue Extrication and Safety
And by 2022: •
Pedestrian and cyclist safety
•
Child presence detection
Although this list is a positive step each will have a series of tests to examine performance and safety ratings. These tests will not be exhaustive Photo by Fancycrave on Unsplash
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or provide a complete analysis.
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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
2) Regulatory controls and standards Regulatory controls come in two parts; standards and guidance and regulatory additions. These aim to ensure safety by rules and official guidance to be followed. Over time standards and guidance may shift into direct regulation. Regulatory additions are currently under review globally with early adopters in Germany, UK and central European Union and state by state law in the US. For example, the European Commision has indicated clear changes to type approval which are currently under review. This regulatory change is debating mandating the adoption of various features into the EU’s type approval process. These changes include: •
Automated emergency braking (cars)
•
Alcohol interlock installation facilitation
•
Drowsiness and attention detection
•
Distraction recognition / prevention
•
Event (accident) data recorder
•
and a whole host of other new mandated issues
As well as these regulatory additions, the US has mandated rear facing camera technology in new vehicles from May 2018, Germany has mandated a third party black box in any vehicle beyond level 2 autonomous to monitor safety and establish fault and the UK has led the way with the most far reaching legal unpinning thus far, in the form of the electric and autonomous vehicles act and the
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for operation. This is the first step in widespread deployment of automation safety features as all new vehicles having raw sensor technology by this date enabling an explosion of widespread new assistive technologies. 3) Vehicle Technology Vehicle technologies are widespread and differentiated between makes and models of vehicles leading to a very complex picture of safety and assistive features. In many cases, Photo by Moss on Unsplash
systems may have a less known impact upon risk yet each mitigates in part some aspects that could
ongoing law commision review.
be a risk factor.
These regulatory changes makes legal autonomous vehicle usage across all roads in the UK and establishes a role for insurers in determining driver vs. manufacturer liability. This, to be implemented correctly, requires further review (ongoing) looking at the data needed across parties to make a sustainable platform for the delivery of this.
For instance, lane keep assist technology
This approach is seen globally as a leading regulatory approach and has recently been tabled for consideration for addition into Canadian law, following the UK’s example.
supports keeping vehicles centrally in clearly marked lanes preventing lane run-off issues. This technology has the potential to offset lane run-off collisions by assisting the driver back into preferred lane positioning. This feature however may leave the driver reliant on cues from steering wheel nudges rather than paying proper attention to lane position. This technology is also dependent upon accurate lane markings and sensor technology to understand its position and as such may not work in all situations, therefore giving drivers a false sense of protection. The
Standards and guidance, although not law, can support safety via self enforcement – these include an OEM industry wide pledge encouraged by US safety regulators NHTSA that OEM’s should all adopt AEB (autonomous emergency braking) by 2022.
positives alone therefore, may not outweigh the
This addition will enforce forward facing (and in the US, rear facing also) sensors into all vehicles
requires a lot of testing to understand how this
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negatives. Technology around fully autonomous vehicles is progressing very quickly, and has the potential to remove the negative human reaction completely. However, to undertake such a huge change technology would perform in the real world.
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Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash
This importantly is not just for the risk in the autonomous vehicle but also those around them and how wider behavior will alter. Specialist test centres, such as the US’s Mcity, or one of the four new autonomous test centres in the UK, have been set up specifically for this reason, to understand how such vehicles will operate in urban and suburban driving environments, but in reality, we still have some way to go before autonomous vehicles become the norm across all our roads.
Infrastructure safety To add further complication, vehicle risks need to be assessed alongside how they operate in a changing environment. Population growth and increased congestion is a problem in many cities, resulting in an increase in active travel and public transport infrastructure provision. In addition, changes in laws tackling emissions means this is taking a much stronger priority in road design and management. Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is also facilitating the change from mobility to accessibility and from ownership to usership. MaaS uses a digital interface to source and manage the provision of transport services in order to meet the mobility requirements of customers. The preference platform allows for mobility requirements and choices to be built into the booking or information system. MaaS takes into account real time traffic information to advise on the different options available and informs us about the duration of the trip, the cost, its carbon
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footprint, etc. and users can pre-pay for the service as part of a monthly mobility subscription or just buy on demand routes – pay-as-you-go. The move towards autonomous vehicles, creates obvious opportunities for this market and already in the US, there are areas that have introduced driverless taxis as a pilot for increased learnings and assessment of how these cars will perform on public roads. For example, the Waymo project has an early rider program in Metro, Phoenix, where users can apply to test their self-driving cars and offer feedback and insight into the user experience. Encouragingly, the project has an enviable safety record, however, the complexities of the infrastructure and laws across different
control and so again, we have the potential of technology distracting rather than assisting. To help cope with this, in the UK a regulatory review is well underway debating the introduction of a ‘user-in-charge’ into driving law. This facilitates the ‘user-in-charge’ to drop attention from driving, leaving approved autonomous technologies fully in control of mobility.
Behavior safety It’s clear that one of the biggest factors affecting risk is driver behavior and how they react and interact with advancing new technologies.
states, coupled with a lack of consistent intelligent road network, makes rolling out across much wider areas very difficult. Inevitably therefore, we are likely to have a hybrid solution for some time yet, with a mix of driver and driverless vehicles on our roads. This in itself, also provides us with new challenges not experienced before. For instance, when driving amongst driverless cars, will drivers become more aggressive in their driving style as they know that these cars will automatically stop? The short-term picture is forecast to include largely increased penetration of vehicles with assistive technologies that will alter risk. Also, in the short to medium term, the potential for more impactful autonomous functionalities can essentially facilitate the ‘driver’ to do something else other than focus on the driving task. However, with all current legislation, if something did happen, legally, the ‘driver’ still has to be in
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Photo by Andraz Lazic on Unsplash
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Whilst the human driver is not advancing at all, we’re driving several times faster than evolution prepared us to go, and the driver information systems that have emerged to support the driver while driving, do not always result in the positive outcome that was intended.
than any other age group, teens involved in fatal
Distraction is known to be one of the major reasons why drivers are involved in crashes.
One of the major sources of distraction is the
A distraction has been defined as the diversion of attention from activities critical for safe driving toward a competing activity. Proportionally more
crashes are reported to have been distracted at the time of the crash, with distractions as a factor in nearly 6 out of 10 moderate-to-severe crashes (NHTSA, 2016; Beanland, Fitzharris, Young, & LennĂŠ, 2013). use of mobile phone technology whilst driving. With increasingly sophisticated mobile phones, the concern for road safety professionals is that drivers, especially young drivers are not just distracted by holding conversations whilst driving but also texting which is far more dangerous as the mind as well as the eyes are off the road. Talking on a mobile phone when driving can increase your risk of a crash four fold - texting whilst driving can increase your crash risk by up to 23 times. As our dependence on smartphones continues to increase in everyday life, this also impacts on our driving. The impact of the change in how we use mobile phone technology in the vehicle has been shown in a recent study (Carney et al, 2018). The study examined 2,229 naturalistic driving videos involving drivers aged between 16 and 19 yrs. There was a significant increase in the proportion of rear-end crashes with drivers operating/looking at a mobile phone over the years. The videos also revealed that for mobile phone related crashes, a significant shift has occurred, from talking/listening to operating/looking (annual 4.22 % change). The evolution of mobile phones to smartphones means that drivers have now moved
Photo by Alexandre Boucher on Unsplash
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from talking into texting and engagement in
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social media whilst driving. The human driver has therefore also evolved alongside the technology, but not in a desirable direction. By the year 2040 (or perhaps long before) we will be in a new era of mass ‘connected vehicles’ with autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles communicating with road users, the road infrastructure and other vehicles. The continually evolving driving environment is expected to have a commensurate human response but little is known about whether this will have a positive or negative impact on road safety. Road safety professionals are concerned that this hybrid traffic environment may lead to an increase in road traffic casualties in the short to medium term. That’s because the human driver is not evolving appropriate risk reducing behavior alongside the new technology. Whilst vehicle safety standards are protecting us in the event of a crash, it cannot yet make beyond human decisions that will avoid a crash happening in the first place. There is evidence that collectively road users are adapting to some in-vehicle technology in a negative direction making less safe decisions. Future vehicles and infrastructure are still a long way from protecting us from ourselves. Autonomous technology is already here and can be expected to be increasingly featured in new vehicles - yet drivers have little, if any, understanding of how in vehicle technology and automation impacts levels of risk. Telematic data fortunately allows for a longitudinal analyses of the effects of in-vehicle technology in a naturalistic setting.
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Photo by Nabeel Syed on Unsplash
Research should now focus on being able to understand and anticipate human responses to new technology predicting when they might occur and under what conditions. There are particular concerns around young drivers who are more prone to distraction and whilst fully autonomous vehicles target removing human error by taking the human out of the loop, it is clear we will be driving alongside a mixture of manual, semiautonomous and highly autonomous vehicles for some time yet.
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“Working with The Floow has been extremely insightful and we are delighted to have reached such a monumental milestone of scoring two billion miles. At Direct Line Group, we embrace partnerships like these as it gives us an opportunity to work with new, innovative and forward-thinking businesses.� Annette Fox, Head of Telematics at Direct Line Group.
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How Long-Term Partnerships Can Deliver Significant Benefits to Insurers and Their Policyholders Article written by Claire Sargeant
During our six year partnership with Direct Line Group, we’ve been lucky to have had the opportunity to work closely with them to develop telematics propositions which truly add value from encouraging better and safer behaviors on the road to saving young drivers more than £50 million in premiums since the launch of their first proposition in June 2013. Alongside this huge financial milestone, the UK’s largest personal motor insurer is also celebrating reaching two billion driver miles recorded with The Floow. We work with Direct Line Group across a number of their brands, including Direct Line, Churchill and Privilege, to deliver telematics solutions which complement and enhance the general motor insurance products they offer across the UK.
Developing Scoring IP Over the last five years, we have collected trip and driver behavioral data for Direct Line Group, scoring drivers across six key areas - comparative speed, smooth driving, road risk, fatigue, mobile
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distraction and time of day - to produce individual component, trip and driver scores using our world-class scoring algorithm providing them with a better understanding of their policyholders’ risk. To add further value to their telematics insurance propositions, we have worked with Direct Line Group to add their claims data into our scoring algorithm to build their own unique scoring IP. This gives them greater predictability of claims propensity and the opportunity to price motor insurance policies with much greater accuracy, benefiting not only them but their customers who reap the reward of having access to fairer priced premiums modelled on their driving behavior. All of this results in drivers gaining an overview of their individual driving style by providing them with the insights which can help them to make positive improvements to their behavior and become safer and smarter on the road. Annette Fox, Head of Telematics at Direct Line Group, recently made the following comment about our partnership; “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”.
Driver Coaching Motorists who receive consistently good scores over time can benefit from lower insurance
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premiums whereas those drivers who have the
• Improve customer loyalty to the
lowest scores are invited to take part in our
brand, through great customer
driver coaching program, FloowCoach, which has
experience
been designed to help motorists to improve their driving skills through a series of phone-based
• Support Direct Line Group’s CSR agenda aligning to young driver
coaching conversations. FloowCoach was created by The Floow’s Chief Education Officer and Associate Professor of Driver Behavior at Cranfield University, Dr Lisa Dorn, to help reduce the number of accidents and deaths on the roads. Our trained behavioral coaches work with drivers in the bottom 10-20%, as they are proven to represent an increased risk of making a claim during the lifetime of the policy, to help them develop safer driving behaviors through the use of behavioral change techniques over the course of the 12-week program. During these coaching sessions, a series of goals
Direct Line Group sees FloowCoach as an opportunity to actively engage low scoring drivers, who are likely to regularly exhibit behaviors such as speeding, braking harshly and distraction which have a negative impact on road safety but they are also the areas where drivers have the most influence over improving their driving to become safer drivers. Our latest research shows that FloowCoach has encouraged an improvement in graduates in the lowest deciles scores by up to 30%, with an average close to 15%.
are agreed upon and progress against each
Customer Engagement and Retention
of them is measured and discussed alongside
The inclusion of additional features into telematics
support and encouragement offered by our coaches. Follow up contact is also made with FloowCoach graduates after three months which serves to ‘nudge’ drivers towards maintaining behavioral changes and improved scores. FloowCoach was first launched to Direct Line Group customers in October 2015 on their DrivePlus brand before being extended to their other brands in 2017. With FloowCoach, we worked with the Group to: • Help their policyholders
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safety and saving lives
insurance propositions not only encourages safer driving reducing the number of claims on an insurers book to save them money and allow them to offer cheaper premiums but it also helps encourage customer retention through engagement techniques and a focus on building a strong relationship between insurer and policyholder. In a world full of choice for the consumer, it has never been more important for an organisation to be truly customer centric. It is also vital that
understand and engage with their
legacy industries, such as insurance and finance,
driving behavior
focus on the customer by creating products and
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An Enduring Partnership As consumers continue to demand choice and quality from every organisation they interact with, it is vital that insurance companies remain customer-focused in order to remain competitive in a fast-changing market, increasingly dominated by technological advancements. Therefore having a service provider behind your organisation that you can trust to deliver a quality service for you and your customers is extremely important and its why The Floow is so committed to delivering an excellent service and quality products to their partners and across the whole insurance market. We are extremely proud of everything we have achieved through our partnership with Direct Line Group over the last six years and we are looking forward to many more years working with them to deliver solutions which enhance the insurance experience, deliver customer engagement and improve road safety across the UK’s roads. Our Chief Innovation Officer and Co-Founder, Dr Sam Chapman, summed it up best in a recent Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
article celebrating the two billion miles milestone [https://www.thefloow.com/news/dlg-and-thefloow-2-billion-miles.html];
services which meet customer requirements. The Floow recognises this and helps insurers, including Direct Line Group, to build relationships with their policyholders by creating engaging insurance propositions through the use of telematics technology, driver feedback and rewards programs which encourage engagement and long-term improvements to driver behavior.
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“I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved by working with Direct Line Group; their reach has enabled us to bring telematics benefits to a wide audience across the UK. The partnership means there are more people using telematics who want to be better drivers and who could benefit from lower premiums and a safer environment on the roads.�
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Photo by Oliur on Unsplash
For me personally, the notion of digital disruption doesn’t need to be scary it’s essential! 20
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Driving Actuarial Innovation with Telematics Article written by Andy Goldby
Digital Disruption This buzz phrase has been bandied around insurance industry circles a lot in recent years and let’s face it, it sounds kind of scary. Disruption is a word that might strike fear into the heart of any self-respecting insurance professional because, after all, disruption is often associated with unpredictability and a lack of control which isn’t great when your business is about the prudent management of risk. For me personally, the notion of digital disruption doesn’t need to be scary - it’s essential! In fact as we’ve seen in multiple industries from entertainment to travel, if brands aren’t willing to embrace change and innovation they stand the very real risk of growing less relevant to customers, and could even become obsolete. This is one of the reasons why I am focusing my professional contribution on helping to drive positive disruption and customer-focused innovation into the insurance industry via telematics. Over the past six years at The Floow, I’ve been focusing on how the data and insights that can be derived from telematics can drive increased understanding of an insurer’s notion of risk
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Photo by Mateo Vrbnjak on Unsplash
for each insured individual. It’s not just about tracking and scoring a trip. It’s about having a continual focus on honing those scores, training and improving them over time against claims data to create a competitive advantage. It’s also about using those scores to identify new ways of engaging with insured drivers around their behavior and encouraging them to make positive changes with safety in mind. So how do we do all this at The Floow?
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Better Scores Creating a set of highly predictive scores is not an easy task. We have been honing our scores over several years and continue to do so as we learn more about driver behavior and consider nuances that might improve their predictability further. Our core set of behavioral and contextual FloowScores sit at the heart of all our products and are built upon literally billions of miles of trip data, gathered from working with partners across five continents and taking data derived from any device (smartphone, OBD, black box etc) to deliver a consistent experience. We capture a variety of data. Firstly, sensor data from the user’s device which looks at GPS location, speed (including acceleration, braking and cornering) and, of course, how often a phone is used and secondly, contextual data which records the roads which are being driven, third party transient data, such as weather, and other external benchmarks. We translate this raw data into KPIs for every trip that can relate to the drivers chance of having an accident. For example, we know that though distraction can be caused by many factors, perhaps the most significant is using a mobile phone. We’ve found a clear relationship between having a high distraction score and your propensity to claim, and our scores relate to the time spent on a call
developed an understanding of the unique attributes of individual roads, analysing data in context of other external factors such as how other people are driving, road layouts and pedestrian crossings. Through various machine learning techniques our data scientists then analyze and score against the six key components of our algorithm, which include speed, distraction, smoothness of driving, time of day, fatigue and the risk posed by the specific roads driven on. By blending a set of behavioral scores as well as contextual scores, we’ve developed a scoring platform that is proven to challenge the traditional proxy-based model which assess risk for an insurance policy. Our data gathered via partner deployments over the past six years suggests that not only do telematics portfolios deliver a 25% improvement in burn cost but our scores deliver a predictive power creating up to a 10x difference in the likely claims frequency between drivers achieving a low score of <30 and a great score of over 80. Using this telematics scoring system alongside traditional rating factors (customer factors, vehicle factors and policy factors) can add significant value to the combined model’s predictive power, in fact adding 5-10x the additional impact that adding credit score did.
as well as handling a phone whilst driving. Our data shows that a more distracted driver is twice as likely to have an accident than someone who does not use their phone whilst driving. Similarly, in terms of contextual data, we have
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Photo by Alexandre Boucher on Unsplash
Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve found a clear relationship between having a high distraction score and your propensity to claim, and our scores relate to the time spent on a call as well as handling a phone whilst driving.
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Photo by Caleb George on Unsplash
Better Insights A strongly predictive set of scores allow our partners to differentiate between the risk presented by their telematics and non telematics book. Whilst this is a demanding task, the data derived from telematics provides actuaries with powerful new capabilities to price their policies and inform their understanding of risk. Traditional factors associated with age, zip code, profession and claims history are no longer the only indicators. Telematics changes that, by introducing a new set of policy-holder scores based upon an understanding of the true picture of their driving behavior. At The Floow, evidence suggests customers reporting 15% fewer claims on the telematics
book than would be expected on the same mix of non-telematics policies with the average claims cost being 10% lower as well, 20%+ increased retention and up to 4x improved conversion as well as the ability to sell safely into otherwise riskier segments. If these benefits weren’t enough, telematics data enables the opportunity to do two things: 1. Create attractive retention pricing strategies for the best risk (after all, keeping a customer is far less costly than attracting a new one) 2. Develop new strategies to engage those whose driving behavior could use some improvement We have a number of tried and tested approaches for engaging drivers to help them focus on driving improvements. Of course, sharing scores and tips within an app is one way we do this, but we’ve found that integrating rewards programs have a better long term impact. Our rewards and incentive schemes are proven to improve driver scores by as much as 54% over a 1000 mile period, and have a bigger behavioral impact than just offering an insurance discount at the end of the year – especially for low-scoring drivers. We work with insurance companies to understand exactly what behavioral outcomes they are looking to achieve before recommending a rewards solution that’s both tailored to their customer demographics and easy to redeem. Where rewards alone are not enough to improve behavior we can assign the driver into our
Photo by Elevate on Unsplash
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FloowCoach program, where we use social
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science techniques with the aim to help improve driver behavior. FloowCoach is pioneering in its approach, targeting drivers with the lowest scores and riskiest driving behavior and inviting them to participate in a 12-week program of phone-based
own claims data, they report a significant boost of up to three times the profitability per telematics customer versus their traditional policy types, and a set of scores that represent powerful and unique new IP.
conversations with highly trained behavioral coaches. The Floow has now assisted more than 1300 drivers with FloowCoach. Through a series of phone conversations, we help drivers to focus on specific ways to improve their overall score and drive more safely. Our latest research shows that for every 100 people in the lowest-scoring decile who have completed the FloowCoach program, 13 accidents are avoided compared to standard feedback mechanisms. Based on the correlation between scores and claims frequency, we project an overall 18% reduction in claims compared with the control group. This means that for every 1,000 drivers participating in the program, we are preventing 31 accidents from taking place.
Better Partnerships Long-term and highly invested relationships deliver our partners a better partnership. Our longest standing partner has been with us from the very beginning, benefiting, as our more recent partners do, from the opportunity to train their scores upon the solid baseline of our core scoring platform. The resulting scores become the unique IP of our partners - an approach that we consider to be unique in the market and critical to our partnersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; development of true differentiation. When partner actuaries and underwriters work with us to further train the scores against their
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Better Outcomes Outcomes relating to positive improvements in road safety and fewer accidents are beneficial to all, but for an insurer’s business there is of course a cost associated with developing telematics programs, which has to be worth the investment. We have developed a thorough set of cost benefit analyses to demonstrate how our propositions can deliver long-term partner value. For example, our UK cost benefit analysis shows that the profit per policy of a telematics policy can be 3x more than a standard insurance book, even after taking into account the cost of building the program and technical costs. This is because of the selection benefit, fraud reduction and
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behavioral improvements (via coaching, rewards etc) that can be delivered with telematics policies. Additional benefits can be achieved with the introduction of accident identification and FNOL services, enabling very rapid assistance to be given to drivers involved in serious accidents. In addition to these benefits, telematics offers the ability to tackle fraudulent claims, which cost the industry many billions every year. My view is that telematics offers some very useful indicators to help insurers identify dishonest drivers. As an industry we will never be able to completely prevent fraud but understanding potentially fraudulent behavior before it impacts the bottom line will help improve the likelihood of being able to prevent the damage it could cause. We have created indices that help to detect how honestly drivers are using our telematics apps: the patterns of how they tag completed trips and a measure of the continuousness of the trips tagged as the policy-holder driving (they may appear to have missing trips or appear to be tagging their worst trips as if they were a passenger). Additionally, we can create indices relating to the integrity of their declarations relating to the mileage total completed in the insurance year, the ‘risk address’ where the vehicle is really kept and parked overnight, or the class of use of the vehicle (spotting commuters, taxis and couriers etc). With these we are able to identify discrepancies which help to identify dishonesty within the first week or two of the policy enabling the insurer to make an informed decision as to how to treat these customers before their “cooling-off” period is over.
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In Summary I believe that telematics presents a positive disruption that introduces a new paradigm of fairness into motor insurance pricing. Many senior decision-makers in the industry agree. In a YouGov survey we recently conducted amongst decision makers from international insurance companies, the widespread adoption of telematics is now seen to be dominant in shaping the future of car insurance. When asked how the motor insurance industry would change over the next decade, all the top five factors mentioned relate directly to the application of telematics. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s our belief that telematics will be critical to the evolution of the mobility and insurance industries. Its applications are many, but what is clear is its insights will be a powerful contributor making mobility safer, and insurance fairer as well as more profitable. If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to find out more about The Floowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s approach to scoring, please contact me via info@thefloow.com
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The Floow at the Consumer Telematics Show, Las Vegas Article written by John Kramer
Members of our US team were among those flocking to the Consumer Telematics Show (CTS) on January 7th, where anyone and everyone from the automotive world gathered to get the latest news and insight on this fast-changing industry. Taking place at the same time as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Las Vegas was a city brimming with new technology inventions, advancements, and future aspirations, attracting more than 182,000 visitors from 160 countries. The key driver for these new technologies was invariably around improving the customer experience and engagement making products more useful, interesting or informative and making using them as simple as possible. For example, the BTFreqâ&#x201E;˘ with Alexa - winner of the in-vehicle, audio/video innovation category at CES - enhances the experience of driving by connecting a smartphone to a vehicle to give users Alexa voice-activated assistance, hands-free calling, and music streaming through the stereo system. In the insurance telematics world, a focus on the requirements of an end-user has traditionally been an afterthought, with most development effort centered around data collection, modelling and risk pricing. However, the user experience and how policyholders interact with insurance policies is now at the forefront of gaining engagement and brand loyalty. This is where insurers can make the greatest strides in increasing customer satisfaction.
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The opportunities in this space are expanding all the time. OEMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s are increasingly building
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connected vehicle data services that can feed new telematics capabilities and business models. Vehicles are becoming smarter, driven by product innovations and sensors able to capture a wide set of data on all elements of the car, from vehicle usage to maintenance. Data on how people use their vehicles is creating a wealth of information which can improve the customer experience, inform business strategy, and improve financial results. The key is being able to turn these large data sets into actionable insights that delight the customer. The Floow’s expert team of data scientists use a combination of advanced data cleansing, standard actuarial techniques, and machine learning to score drivers’ performance and allow our insurance partners to accurately predict risk. Our worldclass scoring system pushes behavioral scores to match and surpass traditional, nontelematics based insurance risk models and is proven to deliver an improvement of at least 25% claims benefit across the book.
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For drivers using The Floow’s apps, our driver coaching team --comprised of academics and social scientists-- have a deep understanding of driver behavior and how to influence and improve results. Our deep social science background informs the way we present our scores to be easily understood by everyone. Further, scores can be uniquely tailored for insurers specific business needs to optimize user engagement and maximize improvements in driver behavior. In addition, we offer optional rewards incentives that can be built into our app to help drivers make changes to their driving behavior. Our data shows our reward-based incentives help improve driver behavior in the riskiest segment by up to 54% and reduces the overall risk of accidents. At The Floow, we continue to look at ways we can improve both our partners’ and their customers’ experience, looking towards the latest technology and continually learning and listening to feedback to deliver industryleading products.
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Upcoming Event...
The Floow at dig-in 2019 Austin, Texas From 29th to 31st May, The Floow’s team will be attending this year’s dig-in conference in Austin, Texas. The annual dig-in conference looks at the digital transformation of the insurance industry from autonomous vehicles and connected cars to big data and analytics. The Floow will be sponsoring the Auto section of talks throughout the event which will see our North American VP, John Kramer, open proceedings on day one when he will be speaking on the topic of ‘Transforming Driver Behavior: A Paradigm Shift for UBI’. John’s talk will consider the opportunities which are available to insurers to reframe UBI’s role by using individual behavioral insights created by telematics to develop and focus on initiatives, including rewards schemes and coaching programs, which actively improve driver behavior. John will also be in conversation with Danny Maco, Head of Telematics, Mobile and Connected Products at CSAA, where they’ll be talking about telematics, the future of insurance and the partnership between CSAA and The Floow. If you are attending dig-in 2019 then we hope to see you there, you can find us at booth 44. For more information about our products and services, email us at info@thefloow.com
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The Floow US Team At The Floow, we think it’s important to know our partners and their businesses so we can deliver the best possible products and service for their programs. We also believe it is extremely important for our partners to get to know the people they’ll be working with every day. With that in mind, we invite you to meet our US team who have skills across business development, client relationship management, client success and driver behavior. Our US team is supported by our 100+ strong team based in Sheffield, UK, where our research, development and technology teams work.
www.thefloow.com
Connect with John
John Kramer Vice President
As Vice President of our North America operations, John leads our business strategy focusing on delivering great partnerships with our US clients. Previously, John was Director of Business Development and Customer Success for a leading telematics firm and he spent over a decade at a top-10 US insurer spearheading UBI pilot and production. John holds an English degree from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania and he is a regular industry blogger and speaker on the future of telematics and ‘connected life’.
What are your goals and targets for 2019? Professionally, I want to help our current partners build their own Intellectual Property and aggressively grow their business while providing an experience that is a delight to their policyholders and members. I also want to attract more new insurance customers and help make The Floow the leading provider of telematics, scoring, and device-neutral services in the Americas (world)! Personally, I want to lose a few pounds, spend more quality family time with my wife and kids, and read more.
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Connect with Nathan
Connect with Dave
Nathan George
Dave Huber
Director of Business Development
Client Development Director
For over 10 years, Nathan has worked in sales, business development and product management roles in the insurance telematics space working with some of the largest insurers across the US and the world. Prior to this, Nathan worked for various startups in California while studying for a degree in the philosophy of religion. In 2009, he went back to school to complete an MBA at Georgia Tech.
Dave has spent most of his career in Insurtech as well as working for a number of insurers, TSPs and mobility providers across the US developing and delivering telematics solutions. Dave has a BS in Math from Clemson University and a SC MS in Management from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.
What are your goals and targets for 2019?
What are your goals and targets for 2019? My 2019 goal is to help our clients to write more profitable business.
My goal is to focus on user experienceâ&#x20AC;Śa zerofriction experience for customers and drivers participating in telematics programs.
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Connect with Christina
Connect with Beckie
Christina Presnar
Beckie Gates
Client Development Manager / FloowCoach Lead
Project Manager
Christina worked in social services with at-risk children before switching professions in 2012, to join a Top 10 US insurer where she provided
Before joining The Floow, Beckie worked for a Top 20 insurance company as an IT project manager where she gained 20+ years experience
support and ensured customer success with their telematics programs. Christina has a Bachelors of Science in Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh and she is currently pursuing an MBA in Information Systems Management.
building applications and providing support for personal lines, insurance policy systems, claims handling, data warehousing and CRM systems. Beckie also worked on one of the first mobile UBI products launched in the US.
What are your goals and targets for 2019?
What are your goals and targets for 2019?
To act as an advocate for clients and help them optimize their telematics programs.
My goal for 2019 is to work diligently to fully understand our clientsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; telematics goals and then actively assist in the realization of those goals.
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Connect with Brian
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Connect with Cindy
Brian Mendralla
Cindy Bylsma
Project Manager
Business Analyst
Brian started his career in retail with a large telecoms provider before moving in to the mobile solutions side of their business where he worked for almost 11 years. Before joining The Floow, Brian spent seven years as a Senior Project Manager at a leading insurance telematics and vehicle tracking solutions firm providing solutions to insurers across the globe.
Cindy has over 20 years experience as a Business Analyst in various industries, including food safety and health care, collaborating with stakeholders as well as working with clients and technical teams to design and implement solutions for their business. Cindy is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science.
What are your goals and targets for 2019?
What are your goals and targets for 2019?
To ensure that our clients expectations are aligned correctly internally and ensure our customers have a clear path to launching their telematics products with The Floow!
Align with clients and provide telematics solutions to meet their business needs and offer the best customer experience for consumers to business owners.
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The Floow’s Vision and Strategic Direction Article written by Aldo Monteforte
“Insurance is the business of placing risk where it belongs.” As The Floow transitions into the next stage of its growth, I think it is important to reflect on what we have achieved in the last seven years, how important our work is becoming to the future of mobility, and where we go from here. Quite often as companies grow and develop, the reason that they started and the vision of what they hope to achieve can get lost. However, with The Floow, I am lucky to say that has not been the case and we remain focused on our mission and the values which have always driven us. That said, I still think it’s vital to take the time to remain conscious of our future direction to ensure we remain on the right path. At The Floow, we are inspired by the mission of achieving safer and smarter mobility by partnering with organisations in the auto insurance industry. These partnerships see The Floow act as a ‘refinery’ for data collected through any device, including smartphone, OBD’s and black boxes. In the same way that an oil refinery receives crude oil and processes it to generate a range of derivative products - such as gasoline, lubricants etc. - The Floow processes and transforms raw mobility data into driver scores, analytics and
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These trends have combined with a powerful force to alter the present landscape at an accelerating speed. In the new world heralded by these changes, an insurer’s core business - the profitable assumption and management of risk - requires (a) a deep understanding of the technologies that underpin mobility and (b) mastering of mobile-first, digital engagement with their end users. The Floow’s product roadmap is designed to enable our insurance and mobility partners to Photo by Kyle Loftus on Unsplash
a variety of services for the benefit of motor insurance professionals and their policyholders. Within this ‘refinery’ framework, The Floow’s strategic direction has been shaped by key transformative trends that are affecting the auto insurance industry, such as: • T he extraordinary proliferation of affordable, powerful connected and data-producing sensors embedded in many objects of daily life, smartphones being the chief example • P ervasive connectivity of new vehicles, provided as part of the original equipment • T he transition towards increasing vehicle autonomy • C hanges in vehicle ownership models
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take advantage of these transformational trends. Some of our key developments here include the following:
Mobile first To maintain our leadership with smartphoneas-a-sensor technology throughout our product range, we are focusing on offering both a standalone option as well as an option presented in conjunction with peripherals such as tags, OBDs and cameras. These solutions can augment smartphone efficacy, whilst maintaining the smartphone’s leading role in the architecture. Smartphones are the protagonist due to (a) their nature as primary interfaces for end users and (b) their ability to provide high quality mobility data at low cost. However, the efficacy of smartphones can be augmented by introducing IoT capabilities such as wireless peripherals, including tags and cameras, that can mitigate some of the limitations which are intrinsic to the nomadic nature of the smartphone.
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Risk model sophistication Enabling our insurance partners to build a unique competitive advantage with superior understanding of risk is made possible by our behavioral scoring and pricing as well as the creation of proprietary scores through self-service and automated tools on The Floowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s platform. This gradually enables our insurance partners to eliminate the need for traditional rating proxies by helping them to generate accurate premiums directly from the behavioral data collected from mobility sensors and onboard devices. This will power the provision of â&#x20AC;&#x153;No-Questions-Askedâ&#x20AC;? policies.
Our aim is to remove all friction from the customer experience in order to make safe mobility easier for the driver.
The Floow is currently engaged in Research and Development programs which help us to offer unique access to a new generation of risk models to our insurance partners which are designed to predict claim propensity of Level 3 (and above) vehicles on the autonomous vehicle technology scale.
Data science Building on our existing AI and machine learning techniques, we can provide advanced contextual analysis resulting in enhanced driver-passenger recognition, greater accuracy of auto-tagging as well as crash detection and loss estimation.
User engagement and behavioral modifications The Floow can deliver added value to insurance propositions through positive behavioral improvement techniques including rewards,
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coaching and in-app feedback delivered to policyholders. For our commercial lines insurance partners, the opportunity to provide their fleet customers with fleet management tools can also help to encourage positive improvements to driver behavior. Our aim is to remove all friction from the customer experience in order to make safe mobility easier for the driver. One way to do this would be to expand the reach of our successful FloowCoach driver coaching program through the integration of chatbot technology into our current offering.
Touch-less claims We have automated our crash detection capabilities, on both server and the smartphone side - all integrated through our insurer portal - allowing us to support FNOL, accident reconstruction and roadside assistance. Our ambition is to integrate across more stages of the claims lifecycle, beyond crash detection, in pursuit of the holy grail of â&#x20AC;&#x153;touch-less claimsâ&#x20AC;?, to reduce expenses and delight end users with near instantaneous cycle time.
Collaboration with OEMs We will look to expand our existing partnerships with major OEMs such as Nissan, Renault, PSA and BMW as well as establish new partnerships to enable the collection of data from OEM platforms.
Mobility services The advent of the sharing economy is resulting in changes in perceptions towards vehicle usage and ownership. This presents new challenges to insurers, alongside opportunities to take
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Additionally, we provide them with the opportunity to build unique and proprietary scoring IP through our scoring service, FloowScore. By making use of our FloowCoach program, insurers can address the riskiest segments of their book with proven techniques that materially improve scores by making drivers safer. However, as the auto space is shaped by the advent of more natively connected and potentially intelligent vehicles, our understanding of risk, which is so crucial to the profitable running of insurance, requires integration with OEMs as well as developing risk models which understand Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
the claims propensity when partial autonomy is enabled.
advantage of this market transition with an active role in promoting of P2P car sharing services (via our GoWithFloow platform).
The Floowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Research and Development work
How our strategy will impact our insurance partners
In conclusion
Our strategy is designed to serve insurance partners in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s auto insurance environment as well as helping them in the longer term.
on producing the best predictive analytics for
For example, in the short term, insurers can go to market almost instantly with a complete smartphone-as-a-sensor solution, including rewards, by making use of our FloowDrive solution. For our commercial insurance partners, it is just as easy for them to get up and running with a complete insurance telematics solution for their fleet customers with our FloowFleet solution which allows fleet managers to better manage risk, keep track of assets and monitor driver behavior.
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is, and will continue, to be at the forefront of this evolution in the future of mobility.
The Floow will remain passionately focused insurers worldwide and enriching the experience of policyholders to the point of mass market adoption. In the process, we intend to reinforce The Floow as the best place to work for people who are hungry to harness the power of sensors, software and data in the quest to make mobility safer and smarter for everyone. We look forward to continuing to equip the global insurance industry with indispensable technology that protects human life and promotes all forms of smart mobility.
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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
