‘Self-driving cars pose new challenges to motor insurance’

Motor vehicle insurance could well be one of the casualties if self-driving cars were to conquer the streets, as is being hypothesised.

This is just one instance where technology could force changes in existing insurance business paradigms, said Pushan Mahapatra, MD & CEO, SBI General Insurance.

Technology will play a major role in the way insurance is transacted in future, bringing its own specific set of challenges to the fore, he told BusinessLine here recently.

There’s no knowing whom to blame if an incident involving a self-driving car were to trigger a claim, he pointed out. Since they are basically controlled by software, whom do you attribute the fault to — the software vendor or the vehicle manufacturer?

Similarly, technologies such as telematics will become very critical in the medium term, he said.

Mahapatra further said SBI General is doing proof of concept in telematics with respect to vehicles. “We’ve just started that project,” he said without divulging details.

Take technology in other areas, say in crops, where insurers depend on long-term meteorological data.

To calculate actual yields, today one goes by the crop-cutting exercise. This could move to satellite imagery or to drones which survey fields and take relevant pictures on the spot.

SBI General is trying to work out a mechanism with providers of satellite imagery and drones, he added.

In certain parts of the country, drones have been used to make surveys for fire claims, Mahapatra said. Especially so since, of late, building technology has changed. Walls in commercial complexes today contain a high amount of polymers (PUF) which are not exactly fire-resistant. The severity of losses have since increased manifold.

“We get to see entire structures collapsing due to the heat generated by this material,” Mahapatra said.

Nobody can even hope to survey that area till it cools down. So insurance companies are looking at drones to do the preliminary survey. This is true also for chemically contaminated areas where you can’t send people to do the survey, he added.

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