The automaker has announced that it is joining the insurer’s vehicle risk rating system.
Toyota insurance has become the latest partner in the Swiss Re platform that assigns a vehicle risk score to make it easier for insurers to calculate premiums that take new safety features into account.
This new partnership will apply to the Toyota and Lexus vehicle models rolling out in Europe.
By way of this partnership with Toyota Insurance Services (TIS)/Toyota Insurance Management Europe, Swiss Re’s Advanced Drivers Assistance Systems (ADAS) risk score will be extended to the automaker’s vehicles including Lexus models. Primary insurers will then be able to offer preferential rates to owners of those vehicles equipped with ADAS.
ADAS provides drivers with additional support in being able to avoid collisions. That said, as this technology remains new, insurers struggle to know which systems and ADAS features are installed within a given vehicle model. They also struggle to know precisely what impact those specific feature combinations will have on safety and on how much drivers can actually use them to avoid collisions.
Toyota Insurance will now be able to attach an ADAS risk score to its vehicle models.
Swiss Re and BMW Group initially rolled out the ADAS risk score in 2019. The purpose of this rating system was to overcome the issues insurers faced in gauging the effectiveness of various vehicle systems. It was also meant to make it possible for vehicle-specific insurance ratings to be generated, which could then be usable by insurers worldwide in their premiums calculations. In this way, the driver assistance systems directly relevant to safety could be taken into account when calculating an individual driver’s premiums.
The risk score rollout for this new partnership is expected to begin in 2021. It will focus exclusively on vehicles in European countries at the beginning. However, the goal is to take this system to a much higher level. According to Swiss Re, it is hoping to integrate the ADAS platform with other automakers, too, resulting in a powerful industry standard.
“We have always aimed to use the data on repairs and, more recently, telematics driving data, to help improve the safety performance of Toyota and Lexus cars and its drivers, said Toyota Insurance Services CEO Michael Kainzbauer. He went on to explain that partnering with Swiss Re allows them to expand on that mission in a way that can be beneficial to their customers. In this way, drivers of the automaker’s vehicles “benefit 
from optimised insurance premiums that reflect the safety improvements it will deliver, as well as contribute to reducing the overall cost of ownership.”
