The Texas Farm Bureau has launched a Drive’n Save insurance program in partnership with Arity Allstate. The program aired at the end of March.
Minesh Patel, director of pricing at the Texas Farm Bureau Insurance, said this. Digital Insurance that pricing upgrades are part of his role at the insurance company. This strategy included launching a telematics program.
“Clearly, telematics is a growing area…you need it to compete in the marketplace and improve your rankings. Nothing can be more predictable than your actual driving, and I think that makes sense for the consumer,” says Patel.
According to Henry Koval, director of outbound product management, Insurance Solutions at Arity, the program uses Arity’s Drivesight driving assessment modeling, which is based on one trillion-mile driving data. Drive’n Save tracks four main driving behaviors: hard braking, frequent speeding, driving time and phone distraction.
Koval says UBI programs can improve driving behavior.
“The app provides feedback on how the person is driving, and that feedback gives the person an opportunity to try and improve their driving, and then, like as a distraction on the phone, we kind of gamify some of the elements of the app in a way that’s a form of what we call stripes. Thus, drivers compete with themselves in order not to be distracted by the phone while driving,” says Koval.
Program members will receive a discount of up to 10% on their insurance premiums – those with good driving scores will receive a higher discount than those with lower scores. Drivers can enroll in the program and then download the app to consent to the collection of driving data.
Learn more about digital distraction driving tools here.
“The power of such a program is that it gives those who may not be very good drivers the opportunity to improve their driving behavior,” says Koval.
While younger people are often more likely to opt for UBI programs, an increase in insurance purchases due to economic pressure has led to an increase in general interest in telematics among age demographics.
“There is a lot of buying going on in the industry and everyone is looking for the best price because their pockets are being squeezed out of everything,” says Patel. “We’ve seen a lot of older members want to do this too to save money.”
