The Sharing Economy and Digital Insurance

Here we highlight a new product: hi-tec insurance

Today we’re talking about a new topic: the Sharing Economy and Digital Insurance. Think about the possibility of being able to insure things that you use only for the time that you actually use them. Bikes, skis, instruments, the your camera…

I’m sure that along with the Sharing Economy companies, you too would be interested in this idea. It’s not a fantasy; there are many who have been doing this for quite a while, and today we are going to show you, thanks to a fun video presentation, who they are.

The Sharing Economy and insurance

But let’s proceed in an orderly manner. As with all commercial activity, the services that the Sharing Economy provides need insurance for their day-to-day activities. Most traditional insurance policies do not cover third party usage of your property, including your car; things which are the linchpin of the Sharing Economy system. This problem is especially evident in the Gig Economy the so-called economy of small jobs. In the Gig Economy, workers do not have any insurance coverage for damage to property and injury to people and third parties.

The Digital Insurance

If the new insurance frontier is the Sharing Economy and the Gig Economy, the way to go seems to be with Digital Insurance. We have already hypothesized the use of Smart Contract and Blockchain in the Sharing Economy world. The new services of Digital Insurance seem to answer the need for a flexible product tailored to the users of the Sharing Economy. Currently, the companies that work in the Digital Insurance area are various, and are shown in the following Sharetribe table.

Metromile

One of the companies that bet on the Sharing Economy is Metromile. The name itself tells us that the company is able to provide car insurance policies where you only pay for the miles covered.

Marsh and Evident

Even more surprising is the protection offered for workers in the Gig Economy by the insurance broker Marsh, in collaboration with the data-security company, Evident.
 As already explained above, one of the biggest problems in the sector is insurance coverage for workers in the Gig Economy where damage to third parties or things aren’t covered.

The new insurance platform is built on the IBM Blockchain Platform and open source Hyperledger Fabric. An agreement was established in May 2018, with target-of-market-entry in 2019.

SafeShare

Another very interesting reality is London SafeShare. Founded in 2016 using the Blockchain technology, it considers itself the first insurance platform to have created a service for the Sharing Economy. Currently, the main partnership is with Vruni, the Airbnb of shared workspace.

Slice

New York’s Slice is focused on home-sharing and ridesharing. Their leitmotif is ‘on-demand insurance for on-demand economy’. Also active since 2016, it has started creating ad-hoc products for home-sharing, intended for those who want to offer their properties for short-term use through the Airbnb, HomeAway, OneFineStay and Flipkey platforms. The insurance product covers the whole period that the user rents the accommodation. The cost is between 4 and 7 dollars a night. For more than a year, Slice has been active in ridesharing, and is therefore aimed at drivers of Uber and Lyft.

TROV

Moreover, Trov was able to collaborate and form alliances with traditional insurance companies like Axa and Munich Re.

In this historical phase, what unites the various Digital Insurance companies is the dialogue they have with traditional insurance companies who themselves seem to recognize understand that these younger companies can be useful allies for reorganizing their businesses and capturing new market segments. So they sign agreements and invest in the start-ups.