{"id":237009,"date":"2018-04-14T11:00:15","date_gmt":"2018-04-14T09:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=237009"},"modified":"2018-04-13T16:22:48","modified_gmt":"2018-04-13T14:22:48","slug":"this-south-african-ai-based-insurer-allows-you-to-pause-your-insurance-when-not-using-your-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/technology\/237009\/this-south-african-ai-based-insurer-allows-you-to-pause-your-insurance-when-not-using-your-car\/","title":{"rendered":"This South African AI-based insurer allows you to ‘pause’ your insurance when not using your car"},"content":{"rendered":"

Insurance startup Naked officially launched<\/a> <\/strong>on Tuesday (10 April) with its first product set to be an AI-based car insurance offering.<\/p>\n

Notably, the start-up (which received funding through a R20 million investment from Hollard and Yellowwoods) plans to use a unique businesses model and cutting edge technology to stand out from the crowd.<\/p>\n

This includes the use of automation and AI-based fraud algorithms which permit certain claims to be approved instantly, reducing inconvenience and frustration for clients and further reducing premiums through lower costs.<\/p>\n

This instantaneous technology is also available to existing customers, and the Naked\u00a0app allows customers to change their cover instantly at any time.<\/p>\n

An example of this is ‘Naked CoverPause’, a world-first for car insurance which gives customers the ability to pause their accident cover if the car won\u2019t be used for a day or more\u2013 reducing the premium for that time.<\/p>\n

Speaking to BusinessTech, co-founder of Naked, Alex Thomson, explained that Naked does still have a help desk which customers can contact via email or telephone when dealing with issues submitting claims or signing-up.<\/p>\n

“I think the big difference is that its a help desk and not a call centre,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Where a claim is not automatically approved, in the beginning it will go through to a claims handler. This is where it also helps to have a claims background with Hollard who will also assist in this area.”<\/p>\n

AI judging your claim<\/strong><\/p>\n

In some areas Naked is very similar to other insurance products, with factors like ‘how long have you been a holder’, ‘the type of claim’, and ‘how long ago was your last claim’ all factored into how successful you will be when submitting.<\/p>\n

However, Thomson said that Naked also plans to build out data profiles over time (based on claims that they receive), making it easier for their AI-algorithms to automatically analyse claims.<\/p>\n

“The the application process is I think a lot quicker than a lot of similar phone or app-based submissions, and we gather a lot of data from single details, which we can then use to fill out the claim exactly,” he said.<\/p>\n

An example Thomson provided was the use of the eNatis system to quickly gather your driving information, upon simply filling in your ID number.<\/p>\n

In this way he states that customers can receive a binding quote within 90 seconds of starting the app, and can be fully insured after keying in your credit card details a minute later.<\/p>\n

“The primary thing that we have tried to do here is take a lot of the pain out of the process,” he said.<\/p>\n

Charity<\/strong><\/p>\n

Besides its unique technology, Naked also plans to stand out through its unique business plan.<\/p>\n

Unlike existing insurance, Naked takes a fixed portion of premiums to run the business, with the balance going into a pool to cover claims. At the end of each year, money left over in the claims pool goes to charities nominated by customers rather than towards company profits.<\/p>\n

However even Thomson admits that the idea is not completely altruistic and hopes that it can be used to clear any perception problems surrounding the insurance industry.<\/p>\n

“The big problem I think that we are trying to tackle is that people dislike insurance companies, and that they are trying to do them wrong” he said.<\/p>\n

“The problem is that when a claim comes in it comes out directly out of an insurance companies bottom-line, – leading to a clear conflict of interest.<\/p>\n

“That’s why we opted to take a flat fee and donate left over to charity,” he said.<\/p>\n

Thomson explained that the amount that is given to charity will differ based on the amount of money left in individual pools of clients each year.<\/p>\n

All the clients who selected a specific charity (such as the Nelson Mandela foundation) will be pooled together and claims are deducted from this on a group basis.<\/p>\n

“If we extrapolate that over the long term it should be between 7%-10% that goes to charity (after premiums),: Thomson said.<\/p>\n

However it could be 20% or 0% he said – depending on the claims that year, he said.<\/p>\n

Currently users can select a pre-approved list of charities when they sign up, while Thomson said that Naked will also allow customers to apply for other charities, should they meet the qualifying criteria.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0New insurance startup launches in SA<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a world-first for car insurance, customers will have the ability to pause their accident cover if the car won\u2019t be used for a day or more\u2013 reducing the premium for that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":223270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9878],"tags":[26,10028,12971],"class_list":["post-237009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-headline","tag-hollard","tag-naked"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237009"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237947,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237009\/revisions\/237947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}