In this episode of the “Future MaaS” podcast series by the MaaS Alliance, we continue the discussion on insurance and MaaS. While the previous episode highlighted why Mobility as a Service needs insurance, in the new podcast we talk about the insurance implications on MaaS services; how fast the MaaS insurance market may mature and how is the regulatory framework supporting insurance innovations? We touched on these points with Ruta Mikiskaite (Head of Client Solutions at SwissRe), Ed Axon (SVP of Business Development at TROV), and Justas Petronis (B2B and B2G Product Marketing at Trafi).
According to Ruta Mikiskaite regulation definitely brings more transparency; however, in some markets, regulation makes insurance propositions just not possible yet. When it comes to the different modes, there is a need of regulatory reinforcement as it empowers the provision of these different mobility services in different jurisdictions. Insurance can also provide advices to mobility players if they want to expand in different geographies so that it complies with the specific regulatory and insurance requirements.
Ed Axon points out that there are huge differences in regulatory frameworks in different countries, both in terms of their willingness to evolve and at the level of the speed at which they can evolve. There is therefore a real potential problem in the consistency of licensing and the operators in different cities. There is also an issue with data sharing from operators; how their services are being used. This information can help insurance companies to bring consistency to the insurance products that are offered in MaaS.
Talking about disruptors in transport, there are certainly some that managed to look at the regulations in a different way, and then introduced more flexible options. Justas Petronis believes that a common business model would be that these large insurance companies actually disrupt themselves internally. With small teams of “intrapreneurs” that are detached from their core business and have the flexibility to look into small use cases, design products for a small set of clients and then try to find a way to scale these up.
When it comes to implementation, it is clear that cooperation of the different parties is essential in both making the relationship between insurer and insured as trusty as possible and to ensure the customer that whatever happens, whether it’s riding an e-scooter for the first time or buying a ticket to use multimodal transport modes, they are protected.
Here you can listen to the previous episode and here you can read a previous blog post on the topics, by MaaS Alliance President, Jacob Bangsgaard.
