Verisk Insurance Solutions is linking up with Intelligent Mechatronic Systems in a strategic alliance designed to tap into the growing use of telematics in property/casualty auto insurance.

The deal will combine Verisk’s analytics/telematics P/C models with IMS’s DriveSync wireless telematics technology, with an eye on giving insurers a way to get detailed analytics and driver risk scores from policyholders. Neither side is disclosing financial details.

Verisk Insurance Solutions, a Verisk Analytics business, brings at least two offerings to the table. It’s Safety Scoring product monitors driver behavior and provides a risk score underwriters can use to provide safe-driver discounts. There’s also GeoMetric, a combined risk score and driver discount rule that rewards policyholders with discounts if they drive in areas safer than where their vehicles are kept, Verisk said.

Verisk said it is teaming with IMS because of its ability to roll out “successful insurance telematics programs worldwide.”

Ben Dailey, executive director of U.S. sales and business development at IMS, said in prepared remarks that his company joined with Verisk to tap into its “close network of relationships within the property/casualty insurance market” as well as its ability to bring its Safety Scoring and GeoMetrics programs to its insurance telematics technology.

Both Verisk products are approved in many, but not yet all, states. Safe Scoring is in use in 43 states so far. GeoMetric is available in 34 states to date. Jim Levendusky, vice president of telematics at Verisk Insurance Solutions, noted in prepared remarks that his company’s telematics models are based on “detailed actuarial analysis of auto claims losses,” putting “policyholder driving behavior in context with real-time driving conditions.”

Last October, an executive with Progressive Insurance Group predicted that the use of telematics in auto insurance underwriting will become ubiquitous within the next decade. Progressive is in the space with its SnapShot telematics tool.

“The most important thing is that data from telematics devices [deployed for] user-based insurance is, by far, the most predictable variable we have. That is what makes it disruptive,” Tom Hollyer, national product development leader at Progressive, said during a panel discussion at the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz. “We are mining that data every day and developing new insights [and] one thing we are seeing is that customer acceptance is increasing.”

Source: Verisk Insurance Solutions