The birds are coming and big brother is in your car

We will be living in a time of actuarial paradise if and when avian flu makes its way to South Africa. While on the other hand big brother gets mobile.

It appears that the actuaries are getting together internationally to build tables that they will provide to their insurer bosses that will nicely load the premiums which people will pay, in such a way that will take this risk into account.

Already in the UK a product has been developed for the agricultural sector, to take care of this risk. In all fairness however it must be said that the insurers are the people who are calling for these tables.

On a different level, as it were, locally a company has introduced some upgraded telematics technology. This technology has the ability for one particular vehicle insurer to accurately understand driver habits and distances covered. How far they traveled in a month, how many times they braked, or accelerated.

And the connection?

Well the actuaries will be able to build tables more accurately so that premiums can be more accurately priced, and risk more appropriately underwritten.

There is a constitutional issue here though, as the insurer is also able to track exactly where the car has been, and by implication the driver and owner. But thats a different debate. Right of privacy issues become a key point here.

Think about the implications for that wandering spouse. The aggrieved party could well call on the insurer to provide the car logs to prove that the car was visiting a girlfriend?