Telematics for teens? Look to parents who want safe drivers

Young drivers might be most open to usage based insurance because of their often high premiums, but connecting with parents can be the key when marketing telematics programs.

“The parents do need the premium relief too – they’re usually paying the bills,” Paul Mlodzik, vice president of marketing and communications for The Co-operators said during a panel discussion at the Insurance Telematics Canada conference in Toronto Wednesday..

Some of the early uptake for The Co-operators recently-launched UBI program was from customers with young people in their household, he noted.

Nathan George, vice president of technology with telematics services firm Modus, said during the panel that when his firm launched a national UBI program with an insurer in the United States, most of the interest was coming from parents of teens.

Instead of looking at marketing to the teens themselves, the strategy became “how can we help the parents help their children be safer drivers?” he said.

The Co-operators, for example, is now looking at ways for parents to have a sort of “unofficial contract” with their teens to view their driving habits and make improvements.

Providing more granular information is also useful for new drivers, Modus’ George also noted. While a teen might not listen when just being told to slow down, they might improve more based on specific information about how they handle certain road scenarios (such as taking corners in a particular spot), he said.

The amount of information available through the online portals that gather their information from telematics devices is huge, Mlodzik added. The Co-operators’ own portal, for example, can allow users to see the health of their vehicle and environmental impact, along with their driving behaviour information.

Mlodzik noted an example of a teen driver in the home of a Co-operators employee who participated in the insurer’s internal pilot program for its UBI program. Her parents were able to see how she was driving, noticing for example that she was driving at high speeds late at night.

Based on being able to discuss that, along with viewing her other driving behaviour such as speeding or hard braking, she was able to become a more cautious driver, Mlodzik said.

“The younger drivers are very receptive to getting all that information,” he said. “They love the immediacy of it.”