AI, drones and telematics: everything that is important for the insurance market today.

According to insurance broker Willis Towers Watson, the amount of $5.1 billion was invested in InsurTech-startups associated with life and health insurance in the period from 2013 to the first half of 2018. And $4.2 billion was invested in the companies related to accident insurance and property insurance, over the same period. Chinese went to 5%, 4% – Indian, 3% – French.

If InsurTech is behind FinTech it is only because of a later start. There is no shortage of interesting ideas, their real implementation and financing. It remains only to convince customers to use existing technologies.

Insurance for a car is not for a year, but for several kilometers, gifts and discounts on tariffs for a healthy lifestyle, insurance of computer characters and shopping in online stores – all this becomes possible due to the penetration of technology into insurance.

According to insurance broker Willis Towers Watson, the amount of $5.1 billion was invested in InsurTech-startups associated with life and health insurance in the period from 2013 to the first half of 2018. And $4.2 billion was invested in the companies related to accident insurance and property insurance, over the same period. Chinese went to 5%, 4% – Indian, 3% – French.

As for Russia, according to EY, the domestic market for InsurTech is just over $170 million. However, the forecasts are very optimistic. In accordance with them, the volume of the domestic market should reach $4.9 billion by 2035.

Initially, insurance companies considered new technologies as a tool to reduce their own risks and reduce the cost of operating processes.

Modern technologies in insurance have allowed companies to assess their own risks more carefully, resist fraud more actively and the pricing of their services more accurate, which is especially important for the clients themselves.

But insurers’ mobile applications that allow them to remotely inspect and evaluate property, purchase policies, settle losses are only the tip of the InsurTech iceberg. As robots, actively implemented to assess the quality of customer service. Programs have already learned to respond not only to certain keywords but also, in general, to analyze the behaviour of employees during a conversation with a client using a variety of parameters. Well, tracking customer satisfaction with a particular service was hardly the first direction of robotization in the insurance industry.

Many of us are much more interested in looking at those technological innovations that have not yet become widely spread, but which will definitely determine the face of the insurance market in the future. Although the insurance model itself will remain the same. Major changes will occur in the approach to the formation of the cost of services. A rough aggregation will be replaced by a subtle analysis of the personal data of a particular client.

Various telematics devices and wearable gadgets are the first things that I would like to draw attention to. The first would be installed on the client’s car and reduces (or not) the tariff for the next policy period depending on the style of driving, the behaviour of the person behind the wheel. The advantage of using telematics devices is that the client’s rate will not be affected by gender, age, driving experience and other traditional components of insurance scoring.

There are special gadgets, which track human physical activity and some indicators, showing about his health. Under received data insurance company can install personalized tariff (for example, on insurance life).

But the attitude of clients to similar technologies is rather wary. Not everyone is willing to voluntarily establish surveillance of data transfer to the insurer. Although companies know about their customers very much and without special gadgets. The notorious big data.

For example, in the US, some health insurance companies are counting on the cost of the policy, given not only medical information. Their algorithms analyze customer profiles in social networks, as well as a lot of additional information that is acquired from special brokers. The simplest example: the company found out that a woman recently changed her last name. Most likely, she was married. Therefore, it is very likely that an increase in medical expenses associated with pregnancy and childbirth can be expected.

Note that these technologies are still quite expensive to use. The reason for the high price is the processing of a huge amount of data.

Assessment of the status of the insured property is another area of ​​application of technology.

Drones equipped with special cameras that allow reading data on the status of the crop are actively used to monitor agricultural land now. UAVs help assess the risk of damage to crops by pests, diseases, or even natural disasters. Drones help analyze the degree of risk of flooding. UAVs are also used to monitor the state of pipelines in remote areas.

But, ultimately, all of these technologies work not so much for the client, as for the insurance company. The accuracy of risk assessment allows insurers to vary the size of the insurance premium so as not to incur losses.

Today, The Forbes Fintech 50 – 2018 has the American Metromile service in the list of the most promising global FINTECH projects. This service allows to ensure a car at a fixed (low) monthly price, and later on, the client pays for each mile. The application not only independently calculates mileage using a special device connected to the diagnostic system, but also helps to track the details of an accident and quickly resolve the claims. People who use the car rarely, and can save up to $500 a year using this service.

American companies such as Trov and Slice offer a practically similar service that allows you to connect and disconnect services (car insurance or accident insurance) as needed. This policy is much more expensive than the traditional per year.

Convenience for the user, ease of receiving services. This is what is put at the forefront today. For example, the simplesurance service integrates insurance into e-commerce. A client can in one click to ensure the device with the purchase of a gadget, computer or home appliances in the online store. Including, from theft. This project was included by analyst firm CB Insights in the list of 250 startups that will determine the future of financial services. In general, 20 startups from the InsurTech industry are on this list right away.

Some of the insurance services suggest that even the insurance companies themselves are not needed to ensure a number of risks. Lemonade is one of the most famous such services, which is a P2P platform for mutual decentralized insurance. The insurance fund from which compensation is paid upon the occurrence of insured events is formed from the contributions of participants. At the same time, the costs of doing business are minimized: registration, receipt of contributions, payments are made by the robot.

The future of the insurance market belongs to personal rates for each client. What kind of data about citizens will be evaluated by insurers is a matter of price and regulation.