If you have a car, you have to take care of a lot: buying, maintaining, selling the used car, financing, and registering with the road traffic authorities. The three insurers HUK-Coburg, LVM and HDI now want to score points with their 18 million customers in car insurance by helping them do all of this. To do this, they are founding the Prisma platform, the working title, which is due to come onto the market in 2022.
Prisma should digitally offer everything to do with cars, except insurance. “These can be all kinds of services, including oil changes, brakes, emissions testing or general inspections,” says Prisma boss Alexander Hund. The customer enters: “need general inspection”. The platform gives him the names of workshops where he, as an insurance customer, can get a good price for repairs that may be necessary, and may even have an appointment. In addition, services such as registration, financing or car sales can be offered via the platform. “We can map everything you do as a driver.”
The platform itself does not want to appear aggressively in the market. Either the insurer makes the offers to its customers, or a service provider such as a motor vehicle workshop chain offers insured persons its services via the platform.
Insurers often lack direct contact with customers
Once the customer has registered on the platform via his insurer, the impulse for an action does not necessarily have to come from him. “It is conceivable that we could use artificial intelligence to find out when a customer needs the next oil change, when financing may be due or the sale of an older vehicle,” explains Hund. Then a tailor-made offer can be made. “It is also possible that we will then know that there is still an appointment free in a workshop on Friday at 10 o’clock, and we can book it straight away.”
Until recently, Hund was in the management of the Check 24 comparison portal. The fact that the three insurers are fetching him indicates what the action is about: They fear losing direct contact with the customer. Because platforms like Check 24 or Amazon sit between the provider and the customer. Those who have taken out their policy via Check 24 often do not know exactly where they are actually insured, for them it is Check 24.
The negative consequence from the insurers’ point of view: They can no longer make their own offers to customers because they have no direct contact. The mobility platforms of automakers are also a threat to insurers. They now also offer insurance, as well as all kinds of value-added services for motorists.
Everyone is welcome – even Allianz
Prisma could give insurers back the reins of action. After all, the largest car insurer HUK-Coburg with the number four in the market, LVM, and the important company HDI have merged. Further participants are welcome. “We don’t exclude anyone.” What if the alliance came? “Everyone is welcome.”
Now it is very unlikely that the alliance will join an initiative of arch rival HUK-Coburg, which took the market leadership in motor vehicle insurance from Munich in 2011. However, the new platform is putting Allianz under considerable pressure to come up with similar solutions.
A lot is changing in the market, Hund observes. The automation of vehicles is making great strides, along with telematics tariffs and similar offers. “In addition, many customers also expect to be offered holistic solutions.”
Together with other insurers, HUK-Coburg already operates a network of workshops that also offers customers services outside of the repair of insurance damage. And every insurer could theoretically offer different services with 20 or 30 different providers. “But that would be very time-consuming and expensive,” says Hund. “With the platform you can offer a variety of different services very easily.”
The Hamburg startup SDA supplies the IT technologies with which the platform intends to make tailor-made offers. A number of insurers are involved in SDA – including Allianz indirectly. Hund mainly wants to build up Prisma with SDA employees, later the platform will have around 50 employees of its own.
It is supposed to finance itself through contributions from the insurer. She does not want to negotiate commissions with workshops and other providers. If there were such commissions, they would be settled between the insurer and the service provider.
Should the system work and Prisma prove useful to customers, the platform could change the auto insurance market dramatically. Those who value it because it relieves them of a lot of trouble are less likely to change their car insurer because of the 20 euro price difference.