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Transportation The Almighty Buck

GM To Leverage Customer Data In New Insurance Business (reinsurancene.ws) 45

Posted by BeauHD from the data-is-power dept.
General Motors has launched a new insurance service that will leverage the data captured through its OnStar connected car service, ultimately helping drivers cash in on lower insurance rates based on safe driving habits. From a report: OnStar Insurance Services has been created to achieve a better understanding of the vehicles GM produces, in order to offer a personalized digital insurance experience for drivers. The service is currently working with its insurance carrier partners to remove biased insurance plans by focusing on factors within the customer's control, which includes individual vehicle usage and rewarding smart driving habits that benefit road safety.

OnStar Insurance Services plans to provide customers with personalized vehicle care and promote safer driving habits, along with a data-backed analysis of driving behavior. The service plans to build on the learnings of the OnStar Smart Driver feature to provide each policyholder with recommendations for smarter driving habits so customers can drive more safely and potentially earn discounts. The service will start in Arizona and initially offer OnStar Insurance to GM employees in Q4 2020, slowly expanding to additional customers, including the general public, in early 2021.
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GM To Leverage Customer Data In New Insurance Business More

GM To Leverage Customer Data In New Insurance Business

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  • Wow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Wednesday November 25, 2020 @09:04PM (#60766590)

    Who could possibly have thought that GM would do that? there's no way that this will eventually (read: rapidly) become the only affordable insurance on a GM vehicle.

    I've said it before and I'll say it again - fuck OnStar and the equivalent services. There's no need to have our vehicles spy on us. I'm even willing to stick with driving my own car to prevent the autonomous cars from spying on me at all hours.

    • I did! I helped them overcome the technical hurdles they experienced. They only had 40G links between their spine and leafs and had an inbound stream from Onstar of nearly 100G! Let me say that again. Onstar feeds all telemetry and other odb-ii data directly to GM and they process it in an ML system that runs on persistent containers (the containers cannot be deleted or they experience data loss) on a custom container scheduling system. Their networking was Cisco but they ran VMware and NSX making inte

      • Interesting. Out of curiosity, what was the ML trying to learn?

        • OnStar records a bunch of telemetry data, feeds it into ML.

          Some examples of this might be... G forces (hard braking/acceleration/turns), your speed, your location, when you change the oil.

          Now correlate with insurance loss data.

          ML will take all this data and begin to understand that a GPS coordinate is associated with some amount of loss... but mostly during high-traffic hours and among people who brake very hard. Or that a parking in a certain area is more prone to theft, but not for all kinds of cars. Or t

  • Hopefully some lawyers (I know, right?) can find a way to stop this. GM doesn't need that kind of power. Let Dodge do it:)

  • How about... (Score:3)

    by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Wednesday November 25, 2020 @09:13PM (#60766600) Homepage Journal

    How about making it not cost thousands of dollars to replace a bit of bent plastic at the front or back of the car?

    That would curtail the insurance costs a lot.

    • Agreed. +1
    • Totally agree with that lad... And how about not making us support the cost of expensive insurance which end up pocketed by big firms whose bosses go on holidays on their yachts on the French Riviera ? This a whole system which takes every penny we have, and when you have an accident, you have to wait more than a year to have your stuff reimbursed... A study has recently shown in the UK that the car insurance industry pocketed $1,3 billion during lockdown (for those who do not believe me : https://hello-saf [hello-safe.co.uk]

  • Oh well. (Score:3)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Wednesday November 25, 2020 @09:13PM (#60766602)
    I don't plan to own a GM product and I'm happy with my insurance company.

  • Translation (Score:3)

    by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Wednesday November 25, 2020 @09:56PM (#60766682)

    OnStar Insurance Services has been created to further monetize the personal and private data of those who have failed to disable our 24-7 on-demand tracking hardware and software. The service is currently working with its insurance carrier partners to maximize profit by studying the data and extrapolating it to create ever more stringent requirements for insurance discounts; the outcome of this will be plausible-sounding excuses for increasing insurance rates for nearly all drivers in our program. GM has no plans at this time to not pass private driver data on to other insurance carriers which are not partnered with GM.

    OnStar Insurance Services plans to provide customers with little or no choice beyond either paying too much for auto insurance in exchange for surrendering their private data, or paying ruinously high premiums in exchange for GM's worthless promise not to steal their private data and use it or sell it as GM sees fit. The service plans to build on the never-to-be-deleted data in order to draft guidelines which will dictate how, when, and where customers are allowed to drive if they wish to remain insured and insurable.

    In the near future OnStar Insurance Services may or may not partner with or become healthcare insurance providers; this will provide a mechanism for both increasing health insurance premiums and penalizing clients whose cars spend too much time in the vicinity of fast-food outlets and high-crime areas. GM may also partner with various law enforcement agencies in our yet-to-be announced pre-crime monitoring initiatives.

    • Yeah screw this. Looking at my onstar safe driver thing, it already says I have all kinds of hard acceleration and hard braking events, which I know I don't. I'm managing to do that while also getting insanely good mileage. I don't trust them to know what the fuck they are doing with such an obviously broken system.

      • Sounds like GM OnStar takes lessons, or gave Comcast lessons, on inaccurate billing.

        Does anyone remember the recent Slashdot or ArsTech article on a Comcast subscriber that kept getting warnings about going over their data cap, but when they finally got Comcast to inspect the drop to the house it was found to be corroded and incapable of carrying any data at all?

  • GM plans to sell OnStar data to insurers and split the profit when insurance use it as an excuse to bill you more and deny coverage.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      This is nothing new. For many years GM was a financial services industry (GMAC) that happened to make cars.

  • Many Heading That Way (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WankerWeasel ( 875277 ) on Wednesday November 25, 2020 @10:44PM (#60766732)
    Tesla is doing the same. We knew this was the direction all would likely head. The Progressive SnapShot was just a test to see if people would accept it and if the concept would work. Like it or not, all insurance will go this way in time. You won't have a choice. They'll likely do it sooner than later now that self-driving cars are coming, as when those hit, it's a matter of which car company (and their programming) is at fault, rather than the driver.
    • I callled Progressive to ask about their "Snapshot" discount program. I could plug some device into my car's oBD2 socket or download an app. I would be monitored and get up to 15% off my car insurance. I thought, one, maybe two weeks of monitoring. The person at the other end said it was 6 months. 6 Months? That's no Snapshot, that more along the lines of The Last Judgement fresco at the Sistine Chapel.

      I declined.

      Funny, now that I have to work from home because of Covid-19, none of the insurance comp

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dcw3 ( 649211 )

        "Funny, now that I have to work from home because of Covid-19, none of the insurance companies asked me how many miles I drive to work anymore. But my rates pre/post Covid haven't changed."

        Just an anecdote, but State Farm sent us a refund and lowered our rates.

      • I did the Snapshot years ago. Got 30% off my deductible and haven't been able to find anyone that can come anywhere close to what I pay for a good step above their normal premium coverage. I'm not Progressive fan but I can't find anyone else that will give me coverage anywhere even in the ballpark for comparable levels of coverage. And Progressive did send a refund check when COVID hit for 20% of my premium. Numerous insurance companies did such.
    • In fact, with Tesla and GM getting into the business and their charging less to safer drivers, then it will force all others to follow suit.
      I keep wondering how soon Tesla will expand their American form of insurance?

  • Welcome GM as your back-seat driver (Score:3)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Wednesday November 25, 2020 @10:48PM (#60766740)

    >"General Motors has launched a new insurance service that will leverage the data captured through its OnStar connected car service, ultimately helping drivers cash in on lower insurance rates based on safe driving habits. "

    Nice spin. It will INCREASE the rates of those it deems "unsafe" by spying on them to reward those it speculates are supposedly "safer."

    All they can do is GUESS how safely you drive based on very limited data. You can be a very safe driver and yet still like to accelerate, brake, and corner like someone who isn't a 80-year-old grandmother, but that doesn't matter. It could also be OTHERS who are bad drivers that cause you to react quickly (swerve or brake hard or even accelerate out of something), AVOIDING an accident that other "safe" drivers might not have avoided.... but that is just you being "unsafe" according to "the data."

    And then there are those annoying drivers who drive UNDER the speed limit (or certainly below the "flow"), brake WAY too early/slowly, and piss off everyone else on the road, cause them to miss lights, miss turns, get caught in a crawling lane, inspiring THEM to do unsafe things to get around/away these data-blessed super "safe" drivers.

    So yes, it SOUNDS like a good idea, until you realize you are being judged by unknown people, on unknown criteria and rules, with no context, and everyone else who values privacy or some amount of dignity has to pay MORE because of it.

    As the concept of spying on drivers for insurance "discounts" gets more and more traction, it will cost more and more until you might not have a choice of any insurance that doesn't, if the choice even actually persists. Those defending the spying will say "if you have nothing to hide", meaning, you are automatically guilty of being a "bad" driver if you don't submit to being spied on by your insurance company. It is a system where it isn't the OUTCOME that matters (tickets, citations, accidents), nor your situational conduct, but your supposed conduct when perhaps nothing ever even goes wrong.

    Welcome to our "connected" world. But hey, they "promise" not to do anything bad with your data that you "share."

    • Nice spin. It will INCREASE the rates of those it deems "unsafe" by spying on them to reward those it speculates are supposedly "safer."

      Not quite. GM will simply raise the 'regular' rate, while giving bigger discounts to 'safer' drivers.
      Big marketing difference of raising all rates with larger discounts, vs. raising just unsafe driver's rates.

      • >"Not quite. GM will simply raise the 'regular' rate, while giving bigger discounts to 'safer' drivers. Big marketing difference of raising all rates with larger discounts, vs. raising just unsafe driver's rates."

        I will admit I can't (nor can any of us) know exactly what GM would do with rates, I am speculating. But I suspect they will make the same amount of money, regardless. And in such a case, the only way to offer discounts to some is to raise the rates of others. And in some cases this might be

        • Oh, I agree. It is the SAME DAMN thing, but it will be done via marketing. To my mind, it is hind of twisted.

          Personally, I like the idea of non-profit insurance. For profit insurance has been a bane on society.

          • >"Personally, I like the idea of non-profit insurance. For profit insurance has been a bane on society."

            Indeed. Not just because of cost, but because of essentially trying to control everyone.

            And when they "perfect" the cost vs. risk of every person, it gets to the point there is almost no need for insurance, because you are paying for (or more than) what you would have paid anyway without insurance.

            The original idea- insurance against just major events, has been lost, particularly with medical. And in

            • I used to work for Anthem (which is behind most of the Blue Cross/Shield programs), when it was non-profit. We had awesome rates with great programs.
              THen the CEO got greedy and switched it to for-profits.

              As to Health insurance costs, the vast majority of American health care 'cost' is CONgress's fault. They have MULTIPLE things going on that has caused this:
              1) many states REQUIRE hospitals and some require Doctors, to see patients REGARDLESS of ability to pay. So, a number of them do not have insuranc

  • OneStar Insurance Services

  • And disable that antenna, I don't care if I can't connect the car to the internet.

  • Soon will be legally compulsory. Driving is a privilege!

  • When I worked for EDS at the Lakewood, CO SE center in the early 90's, I knew a guy working on the OnStar project for GM. He told me right out of the gate "Never buy a vehicle with OnStar in it. This thing is begin designed to be an outright surveillance system!" So I have NEVER bought a GM vehicle with OnStar in it and NEVER will. This new information proves what the guy I knew told me.
  • GM is simply copying Tesla on this. Smart.

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