The connected world

With the Tech Trend Radar 2018 jointly published by Munich Re and ERGO, we will feature ERGO projects under the megatrends we identified in the upcoming weeks. In this first article, we will talk about the sub-trends of connected world – smart living and auto mobility.

What is the Tech Trend Radar?

Tech Trend Radar is a collaborative initiative by Munich Re and ERGO, it provides technology-driven trends relevant for both primary insurance and reinsurance industry. In cooperation with the Institute of Electronic Business and the University of St. Gallen, future trends were gathered, aggregated and rated in order to provide a comprehensive view of technology trends, their maturity and relevance for the company and the insurance industry.

Go to Tech Trend Radar 2018 now!

The connected world

How we connect and communicate with each other has changed beyond recognition. In today's digital age, advanced communication takes place not only among people, but also between human and machines. This connectivity has opened up endless possibilities.

Smart living

Smart home is a system of interconnected devices, services and apps, ranging from communications and entertainment to healthcare, security and home automation. The installation of smart home devices may substantially increase property value and provide damage reduction and prevention.

ERGO Safe Home: Since 2017, ERGO cooperates with Deutsche Telekom by providing a virtual product bundle consisting of insurance, service and smart home technology. In case of emergency (such as water leakage detection, smoke alert and burglary alert), an automatic alert chain ensures someone is taking care of the home of customers’, even when the customers are not able to react immediately. This fully automatic process is in place between ERGO’s customer service department and Telekom’s Magenta SmartHome backend.

Read more about ERGO SafeHome:

Hyperlink to ERGO Safe Home: (Remarks: the landing page is only available in German): http://www.ergo.de/de/Produkte/Hausrat-und-Gebaeudeversicherung/SafeHome

Auto mobility

The new era of partnership – autonomous and insurance industry* (excerpt first published on Asia Insurance Review June 2018 issue): With the new mobility trends of CASE (i.e. ‘Connectivity’, ‘Autonomous Driving’, ‘Car sharing’ and ‘Electromobility’), they bring new business models and enormous challenges for both carmakers and insurers. By being natural born partner with automobility, the insurers could improve the customer experience by sending drones to accidents, saving time (and probably lives), deliberately steering customers to the manufacturers’ repair shops, comparing car sensor data with drone pictures for pre-approval at the repair shop.

For the new means of transportation such as passenger drones, we need to be able to provide at least liability insurance, which is based on a deep understanding of both technology and its inherent risks. We need to understand and embrace change and technology, and revolutionize our very own value propositions to our customers.

ERGO Mobility Solutions serves as a strategic partner of the international automotive and mobility industry. With a team of experienced industry experts, we develop innovative insurance and service concepts for the mobility of the future in close cooperation with manufacturers, dealers and new mobility providers.

Author: Eva Fung