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Narrator 1 [00:00:02] In this special episode of Insurance Business TV, learn how telematics enabled commercial motor and fleet insurance can assist both fleet managers and insurance brokers.  

Danny Wood [00:00:12]  Hello, and welcome back to Insurance Business TV. I'm Danny Wood, News Editor of Insurance Business Australia. Today we're taking a closer look at telematics enabled motor fleet insurance and current offerings available to brokers. But simply telematics involves connecting vehicles via the Internet and then tracking and monitoring them with software to risk, manage and insure them. Mercurien is a leader in this space. The Sydney based firm is both an underwriting agency and a fleet management technology company. Peter Marshall is their General Manager of Insurance. Hi there, Peter. 

Peter Marshall [00:00:46] Daniel, how are you?  

Danny Wood [00:00:48] Yeah, good. Yeah, good. Thanks for having a chat. Now, when you launched your telematics enabled motor fleet insurance in 2018, you were the first in Australia to do that. Can you tell us a little bit about this better driver telematics technology? And what's behind it? 

Peter Marshall [00:01:04] Yeah, it's, it's been quite a journey. When we first started out in 2018. It was, together with a lot of other offerings, simply a telematics offering, which was tracking the way people drove. But as we evolved, we, we coupled that up with neuroscience. And it was more about driving behaviors, which the early models didn't do. It is more about how a person drives improving their behaviors. And it concentrates on a number of key factors such as speeding, cornering, braking, those sorts of things, but not from the perspective of giving someone a whack if they're not doing things, right. It's more about encouraging understanding behaviors and coaching for improvement in them in the factors are not just about safer driving, they're also about people managing the cost of the vehicle. So it's about avoiding accidents, but it's also about reducing the cost of maintaining vehicle. And that's where it's progressed to. In the way that we use the app is a lot different. In the event, we had telematics units that needed to be installed on a car. And now we're totally app based. So there's been a lot of progress and a lot of innovation getting to this point. 

Danny Wood [00:02:27] Together with their progress through now, a few more players in the telematics space. I mean, what do you guys see as your point of difference these days? 

Peter Marshall [00:02:36] The point of difference for us is about the driving behaviors. Not everyone's doing that the way that we are. And the other point of difference is that the app that we have also does some practical things, it acts as a logbook, that it also measures a person's driving on private roads so that they can claim the fuel tax credits of the government. And a lot of businesses you asked about fuel tax credits will scratch their head and say, Yeah, either I don't know about it, or it's just too hard. And this app also has the benefit of making that easy for them. 

Danny Wood [00:03:06]  What about from the broker perspective? What specifically do you offer them? 

Peter Marshall [00:03:11] Well, we've got the insurance products that we have. But with the telematics, what it does do is it puts him in a position of offering a solution to their clients on an insurance policy that most insurance policies don't have. And that's a better fit for the client, particularly in a workplace on the commercial murder, about managing a safe workplace that's mobile. 

Danny Wood  [00:03:34] In terms of, I suppose the wider issues here, I mean, insurance costs of all kinds are going up, you have an app that actually focuses on reducing the costs for safe drivers. Can you explain a little how that works? 

Peter Marshall [00:03:49] Yeah, early iterations of the product, tried to concentrate on premium savings, rewarding good driving. But that gets really difficult because you need to be very clear in your message to a client about what benefit they're going to get with rate rising claims costs and all of those things, you will get an increase in an insurance premium. But then how do you say, Okay, well, you've got an increase, but we're going to discount that a little bit, because you're a safe driver. So what we've changed to rather than having an impact on premium, we've given it a very simple approach by saying if you're using the app, and you're interacting with it, when you go to make a claim, you get a reduction in your excess. 

Danny Wood [00:04:31]  All of this telematics and technology stuff probably sounds quite complicated to some fleet managers. How difficult is it for them to change over their fleets to this? What do they need to do exactly? 

Peter Marshall [00:04:43] Simply they just need to download the app for their drivers. They give us a list of drivers, their mobile number, and we set up the app it sends them just like you get with any other app. It gives them a link to the app store. They download the app it's available Apple or Android, they install the app. They activate it. And that's all. 

Danny Wood [00:05:07]  And say, Peter, if you were to summarize the benefits for brokers, what would you say to them about this sort of telematics offering? 

Peter Marshall [00:05:14] Well for their clients, it's about helping them manage safety in the workplace. The Mobile Workplace and the coaching are driving behaviors, which translates to reduce maintenance costs on the vehicle. But for the business itself, there's the logbook, which is a easy thing for the business to manage because the app automatically logs the logs the trip, and all I have to select was, is a business or is it private? In for the fuel tax credits in the fuel tax credits for business is whenever a vehicle is driving on a non public road, then that distance traveled qualifies for a fuel tax credit, which is a return back from the government in their use of the vehicle. 

Danny Wood [00:05:59] Peter Marshall, it's been fun talking to you. Thanks for spending some time with Insurance Business TV. 

Peter Marshall [00:06:03] My pleasure. Thanks, Daniel.  

Danny Wood [00:06:06] And Peter Marshall is general manager of insurance for Mercurien, a firm that offers telematics based motor insurance. Thanks for watching. Bye for now.