It’s 2028. The world’s population stands at more than 8 billion. In the past decade, we’ve added a billion people, and we’re living in a hyper-connected world.
Our smart tools are diagnosing a growing number of conditions—taking your pulse and counting steps was just the beginning; the smart tools of 2028 detect all kinds of vitals to accurately diagnose a number of ailments and diseases.
Even our roads have changed. Today’s glass-topped highways are beautiful stretches of solar roadways embedded with a multitude of sensors aligned with the self-driving cars traveling on them, preventing accidents.
Insurers have figured out ways to underwrite and insure all that autonomy in all of its different modes. The same is true for transportation-as-a-service. And, we’re already discussing how to regulate and insure the next generation of vehicles – custom, 3D-printed, flying cars.
The pace at which all of this has happened is amazing. But the big question is, how did we get here?
In a word, telematics.
Telematics – aka the Internet of Things – changed everything since it started interacting with all of our lives years ago. For insurance, it started with underwriting and data monetization. And, although there were a lot of interesting early results, there wasn’t a lot of uptake or market success.
That all started to change in 2018.
Data exchanges started to come out. Telematics data (from OEMs, mobile devices or OBDII devices) started to funnel into one place, normalized and ready for insurance companies to use to make attractive offers to subscribers. Insurers could also use the data to innovate.
At the time, CCC was already working with its data exchange, CCC X. Our systems had already processed more than 50 billion driver miles. In retrospect, that time really was the turning point for telematics. As an industry, we saw the checkerboard get filled up—slowly at first—by forward-thinking companies that were making investments in telematics technology. 2018 was a turning point for the auto insurance industry.
The real tipping point started to come when we looked at other use cases for telematics data. Those cases vastly increased the adoption of the technology and made it much more mainstream. On top of that, telematics was combined with other technologies and innovations of that time, and that was what really sent us on a rocket ride.
When early use cases evolve, things get exciting
In 2006, cell phones were mainly used by people making phone calls. Remember how fast it all changed when the first smartphone came out? What really made cellular technology take off was when the smartphone became your calendar, your music collection, your newspaper. It became how you bought products. It was everything, and everyone had to have one. And remember the companies that were slow to adopt? They had a tough time.
In 2018, it was exactly the same with telematics. New use cases opened up the future and enabled innovation.
See also: It’s Rush Hour in Telematics Market
In April of that year in Cypress, Texas, CCC began working with State Auto to ingest telematics that would enable connected claims. With a flip of a switch, a 100-year-old accident triage process was changed. Suddenly, State Auto knew about a crash seconds after it happened. And what did they do? They picked up the phone, called their customer and said, “We see you’ve been in a crash. How can we help?”
One hundred years of process was flipped on its head overnight. Customers were amazed. That was the beginning of when people started to ask themselves about how things were done.
The moment when change happens
Up until this point, the three fundamentals of the insurance process were set in stone: I own my car, I drive my car, I call my insurance company when I get into an accident. After telematics, people started to think differently.
- I own my car. Do I? Remember, new modes for transportation as a service and driving subscriptions, among other innovations, started to become a more widespread conversation. People started to consider that maybe they didn’t need to own a car.
- I drive my car? Do I? 2018 was also right around the time when self-driving cars and taxis started hitting the streets of Singapore, Tokyo and Las Vegas. Maybe I don’t have to drive my car?
- I call my insurance company when I get into an accident. Should I? As mentioned, on April 26, 2018, we found that maybe that was no longer necessary or always true.
