Car insurance news
Berg Telematics tech to revolutionise car insurance
New research from Sweden indicates a bright future for telematics car insurance in the European market, as black box technology is put to greater and more varied uses in our vehicles.
Swedish business analysts Berg Insight say 4.3 million passenger cars in Europe will feature some form of the technology by the end of 2010 - with vehicle recovery, driver assistance and tracker car insurance devices being the most popular applications.
And with the automotive industry now on the road to recovery following its own global economic crisis, the demand for telematics in new cars is set to soar.
"There is a huge untapped potential," said a senior Berg analyst, speaking of the need for affordable devices both in the showroom and aftermarket sectors.
The latest growth area in telematics is eCall, a Europe-wide system which relays distress calls from black boxes to local emergency services following a crash.
The technology has won praise from all quarters, and the EU has called for its mandatory installation in all new cars by 2015.
"Vital technical standards are now in place and the EC has presented a realistic deadline for full-scale implementation," said a Berg spokesman of eCall.
In the UK, the uptake of telematics car insurance has been fuelled by widespread dissatisfaction with insurers ‘old established' methods, and the price-hiking that has gone along with them. In the short-term at least, black boxes seem to offer what everybody wants: simpler and more accurate risk assessment, and with it lower costs both for the insurer and the consumer.