ROME – The new car policy? It will be increasingly linked to the person and not to the vehicle, with priority given to driving behaviour, the kilometers traveled and multimodal mobility. This is the new trend that will guide the offer of insurance companies in the era of electric mobility. A scenario that is already a reality and that was analyzed by the study “Move to the future: e-mobility on its way”, carried out by IIA-Italian Insurtech Association and EY in collaboration with Ima Italia Assistance and FairConnect. The study consulted all the main insurance players in Italy active in the world of motor and roadside assistance, as well as other important players in the world of cars and electric micro-mobility.
The survey revealed that 71% of the companies interviewed already include specific insurance products for e-mobility in their offer, while a further 23% are considering introducing them. For 41% of those interviewed, the pay-per-use trend will dominate the market, a model based on the transition from possession to use of the vehicle, in which costs are based on actual use of the vehicle. This will be followed by multimodal and sustainable mobility. For 71% of the sample, the main trends in the coming years will be “embedded insurance”, i.e. the sale of insurance products in combination with products to be insured, and “mobility-as-a-service”, a service which, thanks to a digital platform, allows users to plan, book and pay for different mobility solutions. But even if these two products are seen as the most promising, at the moment only 41% and 29% include them respectively within their offer, highlighting the need for a strategic intervention to fill this gap and keep pace with the now inexorable advance of the electric.
76% of respondents include products related to micro-mobility in their offer. In particular, 29% of companies offer customers ad hoc products (for bikes or scooters), 47% include this type of protection within a broader coverage dedicated to urban mobility as a whole (standard car liability or breadwinner coverage) and there is a further 12% who intend to develop this type of product in the future.
The new technologies and the increase in smart mobility will undoubtedly have an impact on the Motor TPL business, whose premiums today have reached a value of 13.1 billion euros in Italy. In fact, the market leaders foresee losses in this branch of business and the main players are already moving towards other areas such as, for example, Health&Wellness. From the point of view of the average collection of premiums on Motor TPL, however, the interviewees are divided between those who believe that the collection will not undergo particular variations (41%) and those who expect an increase in the next few years, due to the inflationary and to the resumption of natural travel habits after the pandemic crisis (41%), independently of the progressive diffusion of electric vehicles.
The new scenario appears to be rather favorable to the creation of new partnerships with highly innovative and specialized players. In this regard, 88% of those interviewed declare that they have already started collaborations, especially with automotive companies (65%), tech players and IoT device suppliers (47%) and micro-mobility operators (41%). “Collaborations will make it possible to better respond to the protection and safety needs of consumers, who are now looking for personalized solutions”, declared Gerardo Di Francesco, IIA Secretary General. “The opportunities provided by e-mobility – said Marco Concordati, Partner of EY – are many for the sector: from the development of coverage dedicated to specific components of electric vehicles, to the possibility of proposing policies for emerging risks such as cyber” .
Meanwhile, the change underway is already evident in the world of roadside assistance which has had to adapt quickly to the interventions required by electric vehicles: from guaranteeing on-site recharging or battery replacement, to the formation of an ecosystem of skills and advanced component suppliers able to promptly respond to the specific and technological needs of electric cars, even in the event of software anomalies.