This Week in Post: Telematics and other technologies

Launched by former Ingenie CEO Richard King, Ticker is backed by Munich Re Digital Partners and footballer-turned-broadcaster Gary Lineker. This was announced as motor premiums seem to be rising again amid Brexit uncertainty.

In other news, Ardonagh agreed to sell Direct Group’s claims businesses to loss adjuster Davies for up to £36m, while Gallagher acquired regional commercial broker Portmore.

This week, news editor Martin Croucher was in Nashville, where Applied Systems announced it had secured a “nine figure” cash injection from Google’s venture capital firm Capital G. And reporter Jen Frost was at the Guidewire Connections in Las Vegas, where she heard the pace of technological progress makes it very challenging to model cyber risk. This echoes with one of our features on hidden artificial intelligence exposures, as AI raises tricky liability questions and will probably change the nature of claims. Frost also reported how General Data Protection Regulation filings could be used for parametric insurance; and she spoke with Robin Smith, CEO of We Go Look, which is bringing its self-service on-demand inspection app to the UK.

Back in London, reporter Jipsa George looked into the negligence claims that could arise from allergy deaths and into the device that could stop drivers from using their phone behind the wheel. Meanwhile, Harry Curtis, the most recent addition to our editorial team, spoke with Jodi Cartwright, managing director of Coverly, which will offer flexible commercial insurance to small businesses from next year.

In our c-suite columns this week, Anthony Baldwin, CEO of AIG Europe, wrote that insurers and brokers need to use Placing Platform Limited to make electronic placement work better, while David Williams, technical director at Axa, argued motor insurers must play an active part in the schemes that develop and test autonomous vehicles, despite the many issues that need to be ironed out.

We also had a timely feature on subsidence: insurers and loss adjusters are using digital technologies to handle this autumn’s surge but they are not forgetting the human touch is the best way to resolve claims. Finally, read Jonathan Swift’s interview with Tim Shakespeare from the Alzheimer’s Society ahead of the Insurance Day of Giving on Thursday 8 November.

Enjoy the read,

Cecile Brisson, commissioning editor
@PostCecile