The telematics race took another step forward with a new app that brokers are already suggesting may overcome lingering customer apprehension.
In a first of its kind in Canada,
Desjardins Insurance launched a smartphone app tracking driver behaviour in return for the promise of substantial savings on car insurance.
Desjardins says the information the voluntary app gathers will not be used raise the rates of bad drivers, only reward the good.
So far, the app has received good reviews, admittedly from Desjardins employees, who have been the only ones to use it so far along with beta testers.
Susanne Silva, a section manager in Desjardins's call centre, has been using the app for six months, and has tallied an overall score of 92.
"So right now, I'm trending at about 20 per cent savings," Silva said to 24News.
It's the next level in usage-based insurance (UBI) technology.
Desjardins began offering a telematic device that plugs into a vehicle's diagnostic port, two years ago, to track for example, the time of day people are driving, acceleration and hard braking.
The smartphone app is "smarter" than the in-car device.
The app will also tell consumers whether they've been speeding, how far they’ve journeyed and uses the phone's gyroscope to determine if people have taken corners too aggressively.
"It's really clever," Desjardins spokesman Joe Daly said to 24News.
"It runs an algorithm and knows by the movement of the phone whether you're driving or whether you're in a bus or whether you're in a train or on a plane or whether you're a passenger."
The app also isn’t a data black hole, using less than 30 MB of data per month for the typical driver that travels 20,000 kilometres per year. The app is available for iOS and Android.
