Alternative Data For Insurance Purposes May Be The Answer

Pulling Motor Vehicle Records has become a time-consuming and costly process for many insurance providers. Fortunately for insurance companies, said Eric Waldinger, Samba Safety’s CMO on a podcast with Tyler Kern, what is often needed is a quick thumbs up or thumbs down, something that can be achieved through alternative data methods like Samba’s Volta offering. “You don’t always want to buy a Motor Vehicle Record through every time, so what we do is we provide, through our Volta product, the ability to look at those Motor Vehicle Records in a different way,” Waldinger said. “We have the ability to do a quick pull and just say, ‘Are they clean or dirty?’ And understanding if they don’t have any violations in three years, start rolling and start quoting.” They’re not only an increase in speed, but alternative data allows for an increase in accuracy as well – something that ultimately allows insurance organizations to up the profit they’re making on each driver and also overall. “Our goal is to continue to make the combined ratio sub-1. Right now they’re running about 1.6 to 1, which means you’re losing six cents on every dollar you’re collecting. We wanted to get back to where it was about 10 years ago where it was in that .97-.98 to 1 ratio where this maybe isn’t going to be your profit center, but it’s at least going to be break-even to slightly profitable, which means the rest of your book becomes so much more profitable in every area.”