Europe and North America Reach 20.9 Million Insurance Telematics Policies

According to a new research from the IoT analyst firm Berg Insight, the number of insurance telematics policies in force on the European market reached 10.3 million in 4Q18. Growing at CAGR of 36 percent, this number is expected to reach 47.9 million by 2023.

In North America, the number of insurance telematics policies in force is expected to grow at a CAGR of 36.2 percent from 10.6 million in 4Q18 to reach 49.8 million in 2023. The US, Italy, the UK and Canada are still the largest markets in terms of insurance telematics policies. In North America, the market is dominated by US-based Progressive, Allstate, Liberty Mutual, Nationwide and State Farm as well as Intact Financial Corporation and Desjardins in Canada.

The Italian insurers UnipolSai and Generali together accounted for more than 50 percent of the telematics-enabled policies in Europe. Insurers with a strong adoption in the UK moreover include Admiral Group and Direct Line. The European insurance telematics market is largely dominated by hardwired aftermarket blackboxes while self-install OBD devices and mobile applications represent the vast majority of the active policies in North America.

Berg Insight expects in the next years a rapid increase in the uptake of smartphone-based solutions in all markets as well as an increase in the use of OEM telematics data in insurance telematics programmes. The insurance telematics value chain spans multiple industries including a large ecosystem of companies extending far beyond the insurance industry players. Automotive OEMs show an increasing interest in insurance telematics.

“The vehicle manufacturers are expected to drive the development of insurance telematics by offering the possibility to utilise connected car OEM data in pay-how-you-drive offers“, said Martin Svegander, IoT analyst at Berg Insight. Notable aftermarket telematics service providers with a focus on insurance telematics include Octo Telematics that has a dominant market share and more than 5.6 million devices in insurance telematics programmes and other end-to-end solution providers.

During the past years, we have seen attempts to share data between various service providers through intermediates. “The rise of marketplaces and data exchanges enables insurers to utilise telematics data from a vast range of data collection techniques as long as the policyholders agree to share their driving data“, concluded Svegander.