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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the It's-for-your-own-good dept.

GM to leverage driver data as it jumps back into the insurance business – TechCrunch:

General Motors is launching an insurance service, returning to a business that it abandoned more than a decade ago, but this time more in step with the connected-car era.

The service, called OnStar Insurance, will offer bundled auto, home and renters' insurance, starting this year with GM employees in Arizona. GM's new insurance agency, OnStar Insurance Services, will be the exclusive agent for OnStar Insurance. Homesite Insurance Group, an affiliate of American Family Insurance, will underwrite the program.

The services will be available to the public nationwide by the end of 2022, including people who drive vehicles outside of GM's portfolio of Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC branded cars, trucks and SUVs. The aim, however, is to leverage the vast amounts of data captured through its OnStar connected car service, which today has more than 16 million members in the United States.

GM's pitch is that this data can be an asset to drivers and help them cash in on lower insurance rates based on safe driving habits.

"Our goal is really to create greater transparency and greater control for our customers in influencing what they pay for insurance and their total cost of ownership on the vehicles," Russell Page, GM's head of business intelligence said in a recent interview.

The data play is substantial. The company has logged more than 121 million GB of data usage across the Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC brands since the launch of 4G LTE in 2014.


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  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 19 2020, @08:13PM (3 children)

    by mhajicek (51) on Thursday November 19 2020, @08:13PM (#1079405)

    Is your GM vehicle vulnerable to a driver side loading attack?

    --
    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Freeman on Thursday November 19 2020, @09:18PM (2 children)

      by Freeman (732) on Thursday November 19 2020, @09:18PM (#1079430) Journal

      Assuming, the bond villain has to be beside the driver and insert a usb drive, I'd call that acceptable risk. Now, if it's all accessible via 4G LTE, we already know just how good IOT security is. I.E. The S in IOT stands for security. One would hope that a car would have good security, but who knows.

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
      • (Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday November 19 2020, @10:01PM (1 child)

        by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 19 2020, @10:01PM (#1079447) Journal

        The S in IOT stands for security.

        That is the new quote of the day. Well done sir/mam.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Friday November 20 2020, @12:08AM

          by Freeman (732) on Friday November 20 2020, @12:08AM (#1079490) Journal

          'eh, I stole it from some place.

          --
          Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday November 19 2020, @09:58PM (1 child)

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 19 2020, @09:58PM (#1079445) Journal

    My first thought on this, based on my experience with GM's issues with their 2.4L 4-cylinders, is that GM should focus on making reliable cars before they expand into new businesses.

    My second thought is that GMAC is what killed GM in the financial crisis, and insurance is indistinguishable at most distances from a financial product.

    Last but not least, how many of those GM consumers knew they were shitting back petabytes of probably-not-anonymized data to GM?

    • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Thursday November 19 2020, @10:53PM

      by meustrus (4961) on Thursday November 19 2020, @10:53PM (#1079462)

      I'm pretty sure those consumers are paying for the privilege to send GM that data. It's part of the OnStar service, which can't try to reach you in case of an emergency if they aren't constantly monitoring whether you're in an emergency.

      I'd wager that in this day and age where we all have cell phones for emergencies and are increasingly aware about data privacy, the number of active OnStar subscriptions is a reasonable measure of how many Americans really just trust the system to keep them safe. Apparently still it isn't zero yet.

      --
      If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Tokolosh on Thursday November 19 2020, @11:30PM

    by Tokolosh (585) on Thursday November 19 2020, @11:30PM (#1079473)

    Coming soon! What could go wrong?

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @11:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2020, @11:52PM (#1079482)

    GM's pitch is that this data can be an asset to drivers and help them cash in on lower insurance rates based on safe driving habits.

    Ok. Sounds good. But we've heard similar before.

    "Our goal is really to create greater transparency and greater control for our customers in influencing what they pay for insurance and their total cost of ownership on the vehicles," Russell Page, GM's head of business intelligence said in a recent interview.

    Now that says something entirely different from the first quote. It's saying the data will influence what they pay for insurance and what their total cost of ownership will be. Not that it will be lower. There will be an influence.

    The goal of these programs is not to drop rates. They will in certain circumstances. But, the true goal is to reduce financial risk. And this means using the data to charge more for those drivers they decide are higher risk. And even dropping drivers they decide are high risk. They try to sugar coat it, but the truth is there right under the surface.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @12:54AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @12:54AM (#1079511)

    Now you have to give a discount if they own a non-GM vehicle

    https://www.iihs.org/ratings/top-safety-picks [iihs.org]

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday November 20 2020, @02:17PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday November 20 2020, @02:17PM (#1079720) Journal

    Tesla announced recently they were going to do something similar with car insurance. If GM is already following suit it seems like the Big 3 are taking Tesla more seriously as a competitor.

    Meanwhile, Tesla has moved to a 24/7 construction schedule for its new factory [teslarati.com] in Austin, TX, where it will build its Cybertruck, Model Y, and Model 3 vehicles. And, as posted on Soylent's main page, the S&P 500 has belatedly included Tesla in its index, which means mutual fund managers all over the world that track the S&P 500 will now have to buy lots of Tesla stock to maintain their portfolios.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @02:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @02:25PM (#1079727)

    too big to fail, too big to jail.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @07:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2020, @07:07PM (#1079914)

    mandatory insurance is extortion and organized crime. when will people wake up?

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