Toyota invests in telematics

Toyota Motor Corporation and Toyotal Financial Services have established a US joint venture company with Japan-based Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance. The company will develop products that analyse driver behaviour for the purpose of establishing car insurance rates.

The new enterprise — Toyota Insurance Management Solutions USA (TIMS) — will monitor customer driving patterns and develop pay-by-the-week premiums, according to an article in the Dallas Business Journal.

TIMS will contribute to the development of insurance offerings that benefit consumers — including so-called ‘pay how you drive’ insurance, which encourages safer driving. The company plans to conduct analysis of big data and conduct relevant marketing and promotion of the new services to help offer broader insurance options to users.

Toyota recently launched a new company, Toyota Connected, and CEO Zack Hicks told the Dallas Business Journal that the new development differs from other offerings currently available on the market.

“We’ve already seen some insurance companies offering [a device] that, if you plug it in to your car, [means] they’ll track you. But this takes it to the next level by putting the customer in charge of who they share the data with,” he said.

The key difference is that the customer owns the data, rather than the insurance company, so they will have the power to find the lowest premiums based on their own driving patterns.

Hicks believes that younger drivers in particular will benefit, as the system rewards safe drivers irrespective of age and means that premiums dictated by age-related assumptions will become a thing of the past.

There is no word on when the offering will land in Australia as of yet.