Insurance Smart Box

It’s what’s in the box that counts!

In any industry solution, there are elements that are fundamental, and those that are merely enablers and tools. In telematics-based insurance, the most important elements are the data collection, analysis and the ease with which that information can be made available and fed into calculating insurance premiums – the hardware technology is comparatively almost the easy bit!

The hardware and the data transmission capabilities are of course vital, but MyDrive’s core aim is to give insurance companies an understanding of what drivers do when behind the wheel. In other words, insurance telematics hinges upon driver profiling.

MyDrive has therefore invested extensively into developing an algorithm that allows insurers to take a massive amount of data, make sense of it and output it as something that is of practical application to insurance companies. In stark contrast to other insurance smart box solutions, which take measurements every 30 seconds, MyDrive currently measures driver behaviour every second. In the next two to three years this will be increasing to five times per second.

The company also contextualises driver behaviour against an underlying digital map and the time of day. Knowledge of driving behaviour is of little value when it cannot be related to the location of the individual, the type of roads on which he is driving and specifically, the time of driving. Indeed, the value of driving behaviour can only be truly derived when it is fully contextualised.

So the insurance smart box is more than just the device – the solution lives or dies with the data it collects, and the manner in which the data collection is approached.