The safe deployment of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology could revolutionise the mobility space, though the insurance industry might not be equipped with the right knowledge and data to assess this novel risk, says Swiss Re.
In a new report, Swiss Re has stated that AVs will likely result in a significant shift in risk rating factors characteristics, from driver-centric to vehicle-centric, with traditional insurance parameters becoming negligible.
It adds that the lack of claims data will make the conception of alternative risk assessment methodologies a must-have.
In light of this, Swiss Re has announced a collaboration with Waymo aimed at studying these vehicles and understanding their behaviours while translating those into risk and engineering inputs.
In the report, Swiss Re highlights that it has the potential to promote a safe deployment and adoption of AVs worldwide, producing a positive impact on road safety and, in turn, on the insurance industry’s capabilities to tailor their pricing and coverages to meet the needs of this technology.
Tilia Gode, Head of Risk & Insurance at Waymo commented, “As autonomous driving technology companies like Waymo progress in their mission to make roadways safer, we expect there to be fewer claims’ data to feed existing insurance underwriting and actuarial models.”
“This calls for an evolution of the traditional methods and the use of new data sources in innovative ways. Both Waymo and Swiss Re are leaders in their fields and well positioned to help solve these problems for our respective industries.”
Pranav Pasricha, Global Head of P&C Solutions, added, “Our vision is to make the world more resilient and help close the protection gap. By entering into a collaboration with Waymo, we continue our work on enabling insurance of autonomous vehicles and thereby contributing to creating safer roads.”
“This is of great importance to the industry, which very soon needs to tackle a big paradigm shift in its largest risk pool of motor insurance.”
Swiss Re affirmed that the research collaboration with Waymo is poised to address these crucial matters. Moving forward, the collaborators are set to share their respective risk and technology knowledge to set the industry towards a standard for assessing AV risk.
