According to a new research report from the IoT analyst firm Berg Insight, the number of insurance telematics policies in force on the European market reached 12.8 million in Q4-2019.
Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.2 percent, this number is expected to reach 44.5 million by 2024.
In North America, the number of insurance telematics policies in force is expected to grow at a CAGR of 29.6 percent from 14.7 million in Q4-2019 to reach 53.6 million in 2024. The US, Italy, the UK and Canada are still the largest markets in terms of insurance telematics policies. In North America, the market is dominated by US-based Progressive, Allstate, Liberty Mutual, Nationwide and State Farm as well as Intact Financial Corporation and Desjardins in Canada.
The Italian insurers UnipolSai and Generali together accounted for 50 percent of the telematics-enabled policies in Europe. Insurers with a strong adoption in the UK moreover include Admiral Group and Direct Line.
The European insurance telematics market is largely dominated by aftermarket blackboxes while self-install OBD devices and mobile applications represent the vast majority of the active policies in North America. Berg Insight expects in the next years a rapid increase in the uptake of smartphone-based solutions in all markets as well as an increase in the use of OEM telematics data in insurance telematics programs.
The insurance telematics value chain spans multiple industries including a large ecosystem of companies extending far beyond the insurance industry players. “Automotive OEMs such as General Motors, Honda, BMW, Daimler, Hyundai, Toyota and PSA Group now show an increasing interest in insurance telematics”, said Martin Svegander, Senior Analyst at Berg Insight.
Players such as LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Verisk and CCC Information Services partner with OEMs and normalise connected car data in telematics exchanges which enables insurers to utilise telematics data from a vast range of sources as long as the policyholders agree to share their driving data.
Notable aftermarket telematics service providers with a focus on insurance telematics include Octo Telematics that has a dominant market share and more than 6.0 million devices in insurance telematics programs and other end-to-end solution providers such as Vodafone Automotive, Viasat Group, Targa Telematics, IMS and The Floow are also important players on the insurance telematics market.
Mr Svegander continued:
“Smartphone-based insurance telematics solutions are now offered on a broad scale in both Europe and North America.”
Cambridge Mobile Telematics is becoming a market leader in this segment of insurance telematics and powers more than 6.0 million insurance telematics policies, mainly in the US. Other prominent vendors of smartphone-based insurance telematics solutions include TrueMotion and Arity (subsidiary of Allstate).
Mr. Svegander concluded:
“The uptake of smartphone-based insurance telematics policies is further fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic situation. Insurers that have launched smartphone-based telematics products are at an advantage and can deploy UBI policies without installing telematics devices avoiding unnecessary human contact.”
