COVID-19 has changed many things in our lives, both socially and technologically. In the world of auto insurance, it seems that customers have fully embraced telematics – either a device that plugs into a vehicle’s onboard diagnostic port or a mobile-based app. Telematics tracks a driver’s mileage and driving habits. In return, a customer is offered discounts for lower utilization or safe driving. Digital Insurance brought this interesting information to our attention in their article, “COVID-19 breathed new life into telematics and UBI.”
For many, the potential savings wasn’t a tradeoff that they could justify. So what has changed?
Well, for many, the dramatic decrease in the use of their vehicles lowered the inconvenience factor. In the spring of 2020, when states enacted widespread shelter-in-place orders, people found their vehicles sitting still but the insurance bill remaining the same.
While most consumers weren’t quite thinking about the risk vs. cost equation, the stark disconnect between their lack of mobility and their unchanged insurance bill seemed to have acted as a catalyst for many to seek out new ways to get discounts that reflected their actual activity. That led them to embrace a new technology.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
