
… as pension contributions, whatever wage advantage they appear to enjoy may in practice be smaller. A new paper by academics at Oxford University finds that the typical Uber driver in London earns well above the minimum wage.
To critics, this is the canary in the coalmine for how the algorithmic society may unfold more broadly. If safeguards are lacking in the legal system, a domain inherently designed to have them, how can we be confident that adequate protection of rights will prevail anywhere else?
In the longer term insurers face a more fundamental challenge: disintermediation. Airbnb, a platform for booking stays in private homes, has offered a “host guarantee” against theft and vandalism since 2011. Although it works like insurance, no specialist firm is involved. Airbnb makes payouts itself. Curtis Scott of Uber boasts that the firm is “perhaps the most educated purchaser of insurance ever”. It does a lot of the calculations for pricing and underwriting its insurance risk, and has a potential sales platform in the form of its app. For Uber and its peers, the next step could be to expand their gig offerings into insurance.