While the personal car insurance industry has been all a-flutter with the advent of telematics-based insurance policies as a source of less expensive rates, fleet insurance experts say that commercial van insurance customers may also be able to benefit from the premium price reductions that go along with using a satnav-linked black box.
Commercial insurers for fleets large and small have begun to adopt programmes for gaining access into the kind of rich data a telematics insurance policy can deliver to them. Loss ratios have been promising when telematics systems have been employed, experts say, with both the severity and frequency of accidents undergoing a decline.
Telematics providers have been partnering with fleet and van insurance companies, unlike in the personal insurance sector, where insurers develop their own devices in house. However, commercial insurers are committed to working hand-in-glove with their client in order to minimise exposures and loss costs.
The industry is growing in leaps and bounds, insiders say, with businesses that are looking to encourage economic growth in the wake of the downturn leaping at the chance to regain some lost ground. Fleet owners can maintain control of their vehicles while keeping an eye on costs, and reduced premium pricing dovetails with the other by-products of more careful driving, such as increased safety and improved fuel efficiency.
There are numerous applications for the technology, as the locations of drivers can be tracked by fleet owners interested in acting as their own risk managers. The habits of drivers can also be monitored, in order to eliminate such behaviour has unsafe acceleration and hard-braking and also reduce the impact of unnecessary wear on fleet vehicles.