ERM Advanced Telematics Changes the World of Car Insurance

With 35 years’ experience in the automotive market, ERM Advanced Telematics is offering new ways of insuring your car, improving the user experience of both driver and owner.

“With fierce competition and dropping insurance rates, insurance companies are constantly seeking creative ways to stand out from their competitors, providing innovative policies on one hand while reducing their risk on the other,” says Eitan Kirshenboim, ERM’s vice president for Marketing and Business Development.  “ERM has been developing automotive technologies since 1986, and today markets its solutions to 72 countries worldwide.”

Initially, insurance companies charged vehicle owners a fixed premium to insure their cars, and required them to take active precautions against theft.  In recent years, competition has driven insurers to offer new models — adjusting premiums by mileage, age of driver and driver behavior.  These models require a different understanding of risk and a different kind of risk management. 

“Entering the car technology market 35 years ago, the company engaged primarily in developing car alarms to prevent vehicle theft — or at least delay it and reduce its chance of success,” says Kirshenboim.  “Our solutions enabled insurance companies to reduce vehicle insurance risk.  Over time, we entered into fleet management, diagnostic and IoT (Internet of things) solutions, which include dealing with sensors, develop technologies using artificial intelligence to analyze different vehicle situations, and algorithms to predict different driver behavior.”

Does this mean that personalized car insurance can now be offered?
“It certainly does”, says Saar Avraham, ERM’s vice president of International Market Sales. “Our StarLinX mobile app is changing the insurance game.  Today’s vehicle-based insurance policies offer temporary activation and lower premiums for careful or infrequent drivers. StarLinX provides insurers with the accurate, detailed, comprehensive information necessary to determine risk levels — giving the actual identity of the driver, the way he uses his vehicle and distances driven, in order to adjust or activate the policy accordingly. That is, StarLinX enables insurance companies to personalize policies, tailoring them to each driver, based on their driving ability rather than on the averages or statistics used today.  With its unique algorithms for rating drivers implemented as part of an advanced pilot for private vehicle, truck and bus drivers, StarLinX is being used by one Central America’s largest insurance companies.” adds Avraham.

User comfort in vehicle control and monitoring

The StarLinX app uses the driver’s mobile phone as an interface for wide variably of comfort and telematics applications, via cloud-server or local wireless connectivity, giving drivers access to information that enables them to control and monitor their vehicle and its passengers.  It also allows owners to maintain continuous contact with their vehicles, when they or others are behind the wheel. 

The app also reminds drivers of license renewal, for example, and the annual maintenance check, as well as an alert to prevent leaving a child in the car.   “StarLinX establishes a personal connection between vehicle owner and vehicle as well as providing operational convenience that only grows with time,” says Kirshenboim.  “An example is a vehicle immobilizer, which has made car security codes a thing of the past.

 The vehicle recognizes my phone when I approach it, can disable it and even propel the car for me, should I want. Smartphone biometrics and face recognition capabilities, sufficient for the banking industry, are sufficient for us, too.  The same with the car’s air conditioning to be activated on a hot day before I go in and other similar functions, already included in higher priced vehicles.  The StarLinX app brings them all within the reach of everyone, irrespective of the car they drive.”

“Although ERM operates globally, we’re a boutique company, and use our significant technological advantage to tailor solutions to individual customers,” concludes Kirshenboim. “We respond to requests. We’re happy to take up the gauntlet and develop new and different technologies and solutions, and add them to the company’s many patents. Our particular specialty areas are technology that combines hardware and software, machine learning systems based on artificial intelligence, flexibility to adapt to situations, sensors, interfaces to the vehicle’s systems and, ultimately, providing added value and transmitting reliable and valuable information in real time to stakeholders.”