Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT) is a telematics and analytics provider for insurers, aiming to make the world's roads and drivers safer. Their AI-powered driver fusion platform gathers sensor data from millions of IoT devices and fuses them with contextual data to create a unified view of drivers, vehicles and road risk. We sat down with Ivaylo Ivanov, Senior Sales Director Europe at Cambridge Mobile Telematics, to talk about how engagement, coaching and targeted advice can help influence drivers’ behaviour, help save insurance costs, and help save people's lives.

What is the number one risk behaviour when driving?

Ivaylo: “One of the riskiest behaviours, and a very important variable in pricing is distracted driving. We found that 34% of drivers are distracted on the phone right before a crash, either by holding the phone in a call or being in a hands-free call. It’s important to know what type of distracted driving you’re dealing with, because each one of these carries a different source of risk. We've seen from our data that distracted driving is a regional and a seasonal phenomenon as well. We’ve even seen differences in peaks around weekends and around public holidays.”

Why is it important to know how much and where distracted driving is taking place?

Ivaylo: “For every 10% increase in distracted driving, the crash rate increases by 1.4%. In the US for example, distracted driving increased by about 25% over the last couple of years. We estimate that this brought about 420,000 incremental crashes, 1000 incremental fatalities and about 10 billion in economic damages in 2022 alone. So, it's actually quite important not just from an insurance perspective, but it's important because it brings societal costs as well.”

What can telematics do to help bring the insurance costs down?

Ivaylo: “At CMT we’ve found that structured coaching could help improve driving behaviour and reduce risky behaviours. For several months, we monitored the risky behaviours of drivers who were clients of a top-tier insurer. What we found interesting is that regardless of how risky the clients were, structured engagement helped the drivers. Every driver improved – regardless of how risky their driving was at the starting point. But the riskier drivers improved the most with their distracted driving decreasing by 25% and their harsh braking rate decreasing by 15%.

Another important risk is speeding, which is a big contributor to crash severity. Speeding is linked to about 29% of traffic fatalities. There’s also an interplay between risk factors here. Distracted driving is affecting speeding and is therefore affecting the crash severity. That’s why we implemented real-time coaching with some insurers – a real-time voice alert as soon as a risky event is happening. This is important, as a lot of times, drivers don't even realize they are performing risky behaviour. After the drive ends, we also present them with a feedback map. These things are very impactful as 72% of drivers said that this has influenced their behaviour. We of course give the feedback gently so that the drivers keep using the solution and they are retained, we don’t want to cause extra harm. We've seen that these implementations reduce harsh brakes by 34%.

It’s meaningful for insurance companies, as we estimate that this can bring down bodily injury and crash frequency by about 5,5% and also bring down loss costs (frequency x severity) by about 5,1%.”

Why would customers use this? How do you create engagement?

Ivaylo: “There are four ways:

• The first one is targeted messaging. Think of automated campaigns based on triggers that are individual for every person.
• The second one is rewarding. For example, small but frequent rewards are added to the rewards balance of a customer if they're driving safely.
• Promoting sustainable insurance by highlighting the reduction in CO2 emissions. We can highlight savings in fuel consumption, based on driving behaviour.
• Finally, gamification. Think of contests, badges, streaks and leaderboards.”

How do you scale this?

Ivaylo: “Insurers are embedding their telematics solutions within their core insurance apps. This way, customers do not have to manage five different apps, but they have everything in one app. Some insurers are offering their solutions to their whole policyholder book, not just to their UBI customers. Also, some solutions are able to automatically detect a crash and offer emergency assistance or roadside assistance. This way, you really help the customer in the time that they need it the most.”

Do you have an example of this?

Ivaylo: “I used to work for Progressive in the past. They’ve embedded several use cases into their core app. They're using telematics for a better assessment of risks, automated crash detections and also to reduce the claim cycle time. Years ago, this was the number four insurer in the US. Now, they are number two and within striking distance of the number one. They've been with CMT since 2015 and their UBI adoption rate increased by 40%.

There is a debate about what to do with riskier drivers. Eventually, Progressive chose to surcharge aggressively, and they've slowly seen their mix of business shift towards better risks.”

Who is CMT?

Cambridge Mobile Telematics’ mission is to make the roads and drivers safer by connecting drivers and vehicles. CMT innovates at scale, using machine learning, and then shares the value with insurance companies and with end-customers so that they can learn how to drive better.

CMT has deployed more than 120 programs and has 450 employees, 100 in Europe where they have a head office and multiple local offices. CMT has served 45 million customers and more than 8.5 million are today driving with crash detection enabled.

CMT works with leaders in different markets and where average premiums are both higher and lower. CMT works with car insurance companies, OEMs, fleet companies, gig companies, as well as State Governments.

Ivaylo Ivanov, Senior Sales Director Europe at Cambridge Mobile Telematics