Setting the standards for the risk assessment of autonomous vehicles: a collaboration between Swiss Re and Waymo
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) mark a watershed moment in the development of artificial intelligence and its use for commercial purposes.
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The safe deployment of AV technology could revolutionize the mobility space, by advancing road safety and fostering new business models. Yet, the insurance industry might not be equipped with the right knowledge and data to assess this novel risk.
Indeed, AVs will likely result in a significant shift in risk rating factors characteristics, from driver-centric to vehicle-centric. Traditional insurance parameters are expected to become negligible, and the lack of claims data will make the conception of alternative risk assessment methodologies a must-have.
The collaboration between Swiss Re and Waymo will unlock a unique cooperation aimed at studying these vehicles and understanding their behaviors while translating those into risk and engineering inputs. In addition, it has the potential promote a safe deployment and adoption of AVs worldwide, producing a tangible positive impact on road safety and, in turn, on the insurance industry capabilities to tailor their pricing and coverages to meet the needs of this technology.
“As autonomous driving technology companies like Waymo progress in their mission to make roadways safer, we expect there to be fewer claims' data to feed existing insurance underwriting and actuarial models. This calls for an evolution of the traditional methods and the use of new data sources in innovative ways. Both Waymo and Swiss Re are leaders in their fields and well positioned to help solve these problems for our respective industries”, said Tilia Gode, Head of Risk & Insurance at Waymo.
"Our vision is to make the world more resilient and help close the protection gap. By entering into a collaboration with Waymo, we continue our work on enabling insurance of autonomous vehicles and thereby contributing to creating safer roads. This is of great importance to the industry, which very soon needs to tackle a big paradigm shift in its largest risk pool of motor insurance", said Pranav Pasricha, Global Head of P&C Solutions.
The research collaboration between Swiss Re and Waymo is poised to address these crucial matters. The collaborators will share their respective cutting-edge risk and technology knowledge to set the way of the industry towards a standard for the assessment of AVs risk.