Suncorp-owned insurance company AAMI has launched a nationwide push to turn driver monitoring into a mass-market, gamified proposition.
According to online publication Insurance Business Magazine this will open up the insurer’s digital tools beyond its own customers in a bid to gather richer driving data and, ultimately, get free promotion to other insurer’s clients.
The program asks ordinary motorists to download an app that records trip-level telematics and ranks drivers across a set of behaviours insurers already watch closely: speeding, harsh braking, cornering, acceleration and mobile-phone interactions while driving.
The smartness of this is, by getting insight of drivers’ driving habits, AAMI will be able to offer cheaper deals to safer drivers – who often haven’t shared their data with their current carriers. And who wants dangerous drivers anyway? Give them a high quote and let them remain a burden to their existing insurer.
For insurance professionals this is more than a marketing stunt. According to Business Insurance Magazine Suncorp and AAMI’s internal tracking of in-app data has been used to justify the strategy: two years of telematics capture and feedback has produced measurable improvements in driving scores among users, and the group reports an association between improved scores and a lower rate of claims in the cohorts analysed. That data – Suncorp says it has analysed hundreds of millions of kilometres of trips – is another commercial rationale for taking the tech beyond policyholders and into the broader population.
What AAMI is doing is familiar to the sector: paying consumers to share richer behavioural signals in return for feedback, rewards and a public scoreboard. The campaign combines incentives (cash prizes and leaderboard bragging rights), real-time visibility on digital displays and a light-hearted creative approach intended to increase download rates and engagement.
Business Insurance Magazine reports that the campaign’s messaging places particular emphasis on distraction – a factor AAMI’s research highlights as a major contributor to accidents and near misses. Published surveys associated with the campaign suggest a sizeable share of drivers admit to distraction-related incidents or near misses, and many report that common in-car behaviours (adjusting the radio, checking phones) are everyday sources of cognitive and manual distraction. That emphasis is consistent with industry research showing distraction now sits alongside fatigue and speed as a leading contributor to road trauma.
For insurers, the distracted-driving signal is especially valuable because it is a behavioural cause that is amenable to change: app-based feedback, targeted communications, and incentive structures can reduce in-vehicle phone interactions and attendant crash risk.
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