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If You Want Cheap Car Insurance, You Might Have to Sacrifice Your Privacy
Consumers often face a choice: pay sky-high premiums or install an app that tracks them everywhere
After six years of living in Europe without a car, I recently decided to get behind the wheel again when I moved to Canada. My partner and I bought a used Hyundai and then went shopping for car insurance. We were surprised to find that premiums in Ontario, where we live, are outrageously expensive — hundreds of dollars a month. And we were even more surprised to find that almost every insurance company offered us a solution to these high premiums: an app.
The app monitors your driving and assigns a “save driving score.” If you drive more safely, the insurance companies insist, they can offer you a higher discount — up to 20% off on the premium every year.
For insurance companies, apps like these are part of a trend toward underwriting based on behavior, not just demographics. As explains a Deloitte report on the topic:
“Current rating methods would likely rate two drivers identically if they had the same credit scores, automobiles, and demographics and lived in areas with similar geographic profiles. However, what if we knew through telematics…
