The company will be offering tracking technology to auto insurers.
Sprint, the American wireless giant, has announced that it will providing usage based insurance tracking technology to auto insurers with programs that monitor the driving habits of their policyholders/
The announcement was made regarding Sprint’s new Integrated Insurance Solutions unit.
The usage based insurance programs in which the technology will function are popping up all over the country. Among them, Progressive’s Snapshot has been among the most popular. The technology tracks various driver behaviors, such as the distance the car travels, the speed, hard braking, and location.
A small diagnostic device attached to the vehicle is the center of usage based insurance.
The device transmits the data about the way that the car has been driven. When the insurer receives it, it is analyzed and a discount is applied through the usage based insurance program when applicable. This allows good drivers and those who rarely use their vehicles to benefit from premiums that better reflect the low risk that they present to insurers.
Sprint’s announcement said that it will offer a complete usage based insurance package to insurers, including the wireless services for data transmission, the device itself, and even the software required for scoring the behavior of the driver.
According to industry consultants, there are currently more than thirty auto insurers in North America that are considering some form of usage based insurance program. However, they also pointed out that many are facing significant barriers to entry. Some of their estimates indicate that it could take as much as five years for the development of a new program, for it to be tested in trials, and for the actual launch to occur.
With this knowledge, Progressive recently opened its program to non-customers in an aggressive move to take its place as the primary provider of usage based insurance in the country. This campaign allows non customers to test the way that the hardware functions and see what kind of a discount they would obtain and what their premiums would be through that auto insurer if they were to switch to the Snapshot program.
