As per the combined police data from all the states, almost 1200 accidents take place every day, leading to the death of 400 people. This is up by 5% in 2016 as compared to 2015. Now, that is a gigantic and an alarming number when compared to any other part of the world. Majority of these accidents are attributed to reckless driving and not following road security conventions. The answer to this grave problem can partly be answered with one little known data tracking method such as telematics.
To this date, almost 70% of the cars are insured in India’s ever growing insurance market and more are likely to follow suit in this booming age. This brings us to an important question:
Is it the right time to consider telematics insurance India??
Telematics Insurance in India
Telematics insurance is already successful in countries like UK , Italy, and Germany and is slowly gaining prominence in USA as well.
As the car insurance and bike insurance premiums are slowly on the rise in India, it should make sense for the insurers to offer this type of an insurance.
What is Telematics Insurance
Telematics insurance comes as a GPS enabled black box that fits into your car or bike or simply works as a mobile app that collects data like
- How often break the speed limit .
- How often you apply brakes.
- How long do you drive.
- What area do you drive most of the time.
The black box consists of a
- GPS that maps the whereabouts of the car and the type of roads the vehicle is on.
- Sensor that tracks the changes in speed and application of brakes
- SIM card that sends the online data to a database.
- Program that controls how the data is analyzed.
Reasons that telematics might do really well in India are as follows:
- It helps the insurers in identifying low-risk customers who are less likely to claim. This helps the companies offer less premium costs to the ‘safe and conscious’ drivers.
- The clients can look up their driving details on a telematics website which can help them understand their driving behavior. This can help them become better drivers.
- In case of an accident, insurers and the police can leverage the data from the GPS to find out the exact cause of the accident and who is to blame.
- Premium savvy customers can lead to an overall reduction in accidents and thus lead to save precious lives
If you are a customer who is seeking a car insurance or bike insurance plan, then it is advisable to search for an insurer that provides telematics insurance. This is not only to save money on premium but also to put a check on your driving behavior as well. As dutiful citizens of the country, I think it is the responsibility of both the insurance companies and the customers to make telematics a phenomenon in the country so that the mammoth problem of everyday accidents can be addressed and important lives be saved.
Sumit Dhawan is a professional content writer who writes about all forms of insurance and investment for a well known Indian insurance aggregator brand called Policybazaar.com.