When data can save your client’s life

The recent surfacing of just how much private data is accessible to companies has concerned certain sectors of the public and brought up fears of the realisation of an Orwellian society in which privacy is available to only the elite few. Let us face it, as insurers and financial advisers, we have access to multiple layers of intimate client details which includes how much you earn, how you spend your money, items in your home, how you spend your time, when you exercise and where, even what you ate for breakfast.

Compound this with the kind of picture social networking companies can piece together on you and how a cursory snoop around any profile page instantly reveals lifestyle clues, surely your sovereignty comes into question?

Sometimes though, out of this advancing and ever changing landscape, comes technology that can truly benefit people and even save lives.

Let’s look at the example of vehicle insurance. There are many accounts of stolen vehicle recoveries and many cases of personal tragedy being averted where children and even injured patients were returned. An example of this was the dramatic case of a hijacked ambulance in the mountains of KZN. Amazingly, in some of these real-life Rescue 911s, the ordeal was over in less than an hour from first report to safe return of the vehicle and arrest of the perpetrators. All thanks to the advancements in data-driven telematics.

But what if data can be gathered to establish preventative measures? Technology now exists which can pre-empt, and in some cases predict, dangerous situations. Telematics services provider Tracker possesses an algorithm which maps out and models regular driver behaviour. Any activity outside of which sets off an alert in real time, allowing drivers, mothers or fathers the best possible opportunity to react to or avert a potentially dangerous situation.

Gareth Crocker, Communications Manager of Tracker says, "There is no doubt that telematics information not only saves lives in both a proactive and reactive sense, but it offers real financial value to insurers, businesses and individual consumers alike. It’s one of those rare technologies that benefits a number of different entities in the spectrum of vehicle usage and personal safety.”

Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa, recently praised the efforts of companies like Tracker whose technology and data forms a powerful collaborative foil for vehicle crime. With more than 1 400 police tracking computers fitted on police vehicles, Mthethwa said that the partnership has achieved 65 000 recoveries, which has led them to more than 12 000 arrests. In fact, four provinces in SA arrest 1 suspect for every 1.5 to 2 vehicles recovered.

Supporting metrics out of the US and Europe finds that, since 2012, the market share of usage-based insurance policies has doubled, signalling a rise in tolerance for data intelligence for the purposes of good.

The reality going forward is that vehicle data and advanced telematics have an even greater role to play in making it safer, more efficient and more affordable for companies and motorists to go about their business.