Suncorp has shared what its road safety competition could save it each year: $4.2 million a year in motor claims.
That’s Suncorp’s forecast annual reduction following the AAMI Driving Test, a six-month telematics contest that launched at last year’s AFL Grand Final and closed on 9 February. Suncorp says the result came in 9% ahead of its internal claims reduction target. The marketing numbers also beat expectations: around 134,000 app downloads, a third more than planned, and about 500,000 visits to the campaign website.
Fewer people actually took part than those figures imply, but this still looks like a runaway success. According to AAMI’s results release, 49,872 drivers entered, and 32,108 of them recorded a score for at least 15 consecutive days. Between them they drove almost 100 million kilometres, scored on speeding, phone use, acceleration, braking and cornering.
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AAMI and its creative agency, Leo Australia, built the campaign around the fact that most drivers rate themselves above average. Each participant got a score out of 100 and could see how it compared with everyone else’s.
Drivers who started near the bottom improved the most. Among those who stayed in the competition for at least three months, drivers starting below 50 gained 18.5 points on average. Drivers starting between 51 and 60 gained 13.5 points, and those starting between 61 and 70 gained 10.
Most of the improvement came in braking, acceleration and cornering, where about one in eight participants lifted their scores by more than 20 points. There was little room to improve on speeding, where entrants averaged 97 at the start. Phone use was a different story. It started at an average of 91 and barely moved over the campaign, so the competition did little to reduce distracted driving, one of the behaviours road safety bodies worry about most.
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Although there are a lot of noughts in the number, the $4.2 million needs to be read against Suncorp’s scale. The group reported net incurred claims of $10.24 billion for FY26, which puts the forecast saving at roughly 0.04% of the total. Suncorp has also told investors that motor claims inflation is continuing, particularly in repair costs.
What makes the concept even more clever is how the insurer has managed to engage potential new clients. Suncorp says 27% of participants were not AAMI customers, so the app put AAMI in front of other insurers’ policyholders and showed it how they drive. Suncorp also cites Ipsos research indicating an 18% lift in brand consideration. In that survey, 85% of respondents said the campaign made them see AAMI as a road safety leader, and 61% said it had prompted them to drive more carefully.
The data for the insurance giant keeps accumulating. AAMI’s Driver Rewards app launched in 2022, and Suncorp says it has captured more than a billion kilometres of driving since then. That gives the insurer a way to test whether road safety interventions change behaviour, and a growing picture of how Australians actually drive.
For now, AAMI says app scores do not affect premiums and are not used against customers at claim or renewal time. If that ever changes, Suncorp can expect the same privacy and fairness questions that usage-based insurance has faced overseas.
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The driving test is part of a broader Suncorp push into loss prevention, alongside home-focused programmes Resilience Rd and Haven. The aim is to reduce claims before they happen rather than manage repair costs afterwards.
The road toll gives that push some urgency. The National Road Safety Data Hub recorded 1,334 deaths in the 12 months to September 2026, and Australia is on track for its highest annual toll since 2010. Western Australia alone is set to top 200 road deaths for the first time since 2008.
The results come with caveats. Entrants chose to take part, and drivers chasing prizes may not behave like the wider motoring population. Suncorp has also acknowledged that high petrol prices may be reducing the kilometres people drive, which would cut claims regardless of any campaign. It will take time to tell the two effects apart.
Suncorp says it will keep the Driver Rewards programme running and is working on a follow-up based on new research into driver profiles. Brokers handling fleet accounts will be watching to see whether score-based feedback can produce the same quick improvement among a fleet’s worst drivers that it did among competition entrants.
