NEW DELHI: New-age consumer behaviour and technological disruptions such as autonomous vehicles are impacting the way insurance companies function across the world, said head of assistance business and Apac region for
Allianz Partners, Sylvie Ouziel.
France-headquartered Alliance Partners, one of the world’s leading assistance and insurance companies, gets half its business from cars. “Cars are changing,” said Ouziel. “People own fewer
cars these days. More and more cars are going electric. They have fewer moving parts and therefore are less prone to breakdowns, which means less business for us.”
Similarly, as driverless cars become more mainstream, insurance companies are having to differentiate between the responsibilities of the driver and the software that controls the vehicle. “It gets more complicated when you have both autonomous and non-autonomous cars on the road,” said Ouziel.
Apart from technology, changing consumer behaviour too is putting the once conservative insurance industry at the crossroads of sweeping social and economic transformation.
“Across the world, more and more consumers are becoming less attached to assets,” said Ouziel. “For instance, the young generation don’t want to own cars. They want mobility solutions like in the case of Uber or Ola. They want to share their car with other riders.”
Rising asset costs is driving this behaviour, according to Ouziel. For instance, to maximise the yield from their assets such as homes, people are turning to
Airbnb to rent them out. “They are even leasing their washing machines.”
And India, along with China, is far ahead of the curve.
Sylvie Ouziel says EVs and driverless cars are making life tough for insurers
