According to Quarterly UBI Dashboard of Ptolemus Consulting, North America represents the biggest market to date with over 7.1 million active policies. This compares to 6.5 million active policies in Europe and less than 0.4 million in the rest of the world.
The 3 biggest UBI insurers in North America are Progressive, Allstate and Liberty Mutual. In Europe, the market is led by UnipolSai, Generali and AXA.
On the supply side, over two-thirds of UBI policy volumes worldwide are outsourced to so-called Telematics Service Providers (TSPs). Octo Telematics controls about a third of the global market, followed by Vodafone Automotive and Movitrack Viasat.
Leading Telematics Technology Providers (TTPs), ranked by the number of UBI devices in use worldwide are Meta System, Xirgo and Danlaw.
Some of the key connected auto insurance market trends include:
• An increased penetration of telematics in new insurance policies (up to a third of new auto policies for the most advanced insurers),
• An increased variety of devices used by insurers, and the Cigarette Lighter Adapter (CLA)** becoming a credible alternative to OBD dongles in Europe.
• The rapid growth in new smartphone-enabled programmes, particularly in the US, which will continue as Progressive just announced its nationwide mobile UBI roll-out,
• A still very slow take-up of OEM-led programmes, which makes the aftermarket the preferred route for insurance carriers to collect dynamic data,
• Burgeoning activity in a number of new regions including Benelux, China, France and Germany.
**CLA has enabled the insurers to gather driving behaviour data at around 15 percent of the cost of a hard-wired device, but with similar levels of accuracy and data quality. It is a self-installed 12V device that gets plugged into the cigarette lighter. The 12V device is paired with the policyholder’s smartphone and communicates over Bluetooth technology with the designated smartphone app to record driving behaviour data. It is a significant step forward for the telematics insurance market.
