The Netherlands’ biggest insurance company Achmea plans to offer premium discounts to customers who agree to have their behaviour at home and in the car monitored, the Financieele Dagblad says on Thursday.
For example, Achmea is working with Google Nest to develop a meter which will be linked to its home insurance policy. The meter will have a smoke alarm and thermostat and will provide clients with ‘useful information’ about their homes.
Those who agree to share the information with Achmea itself will get a discount on their premiums. ‘We are going to link insurance policies to the use of the meters,’ said strategy director Albert Spijkman. ‘We are prepared to lower premiums.
If customers live in safer environments, we have to pay out for less damage.’ Achmea is also working on a car meter which will monitor driving behaviour. Customers who don’t drive too fast, for example, could also be rewarded with lower premiums, the paper says.
Achmea stressed it has no plans to share the information gathered via the meters with third parties. Banking group ING was hammered when it said it planned to sell information about customer spending patterns to other companies.
Achmea is the first of the big insurance companies to use private information from its customers to determine premiums, the FD says. There are some small companies such as Fairzekering which already work with similar systems, the paper says.
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