Date: Feb 27, 2013 Source: PR Newswire (
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Based on its recent analysis of the automotive usage-based insurance (UBI) market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Sprint's Integrated Insurance Solutions (ISS) with the 2013 North America Frost & Sullivan Award for Customer Value Enhancement. As privacy and data security are key issues in the automotive UBI market, Sprint has built secure wireless network platforms that can accommodate almost any application in any vertical, both efficiently and affordably.
The company is a member of the board of the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD), which sets insurance data standards. This position has allowed Sprint to become one of the first North American telecom providers to be a telematics service provider in the UBI space. Sprint's market eminence offers data confidentiality and integrity to insurance companies and, hence, policyholders.
Sprint provides the five essential tools of connectivity, device, application portals, operations/logistics, and customer care for insurance companies to develop a successful UBI program.
Sprint's 3G network provides connectivity, while hardware companies supply the plug-and-play devices. The application portal is showcased through customizable solutions; alerts and data hosting platforms; and order taking, device management, provisioning account for operations, and logistics. Finally, customer care is enabled through after-sales support and project management.
"Sprint's integrated insurance solutions will empower small- to medium-sized insurance companies, enabling them to offer end users direct control of their insurance premiums," said Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Niranjan Manohar. "This is likely to influence governments to provide further tax discounts to insurance companies and policyholders adopting this method."
Sprint's in-house UBI program expertise allows it to keep track of customers, and the data transmitted through its wireless carrier to its own servers help prevent fraudulent claims. As usage-based systems facilitate dynamic risk calculation, it can bring about positive changes in users' driving behavior, reduce accidents and, ultimately, increase the insurance provider's profits.
Sprint's turnkey approach enables insurers to calculate risks precisely and consequently, and price the service aggressively. The company offers an integrated UBI solution through various relationships. For instance, its collaboration with Agnik, which develops analytical tools such as Mine Drive and Vyncs, helps identify risks accurately based on vehicle or individual driver behavior.
This suite of Web-based tools fosters data mining, clustering, predictive modeling, and segmentation, offering insurance companies actuarial analysis. These actuarial analyses, in turn, help insurance companies with tracking. Mine Drive assists administrators of insurance companies with vehicle information/data and support of new product offers, such as teen driver plans, whereas Vyncs is a family management tool, designed for households with several cars.
"Value-added services such as Web-based automated provisioning, management and customer support, as well as reverse logistics and warehousing, have helped showcase the company's expertise in the machine-to-machine space," noted Industry Analyst Niranjan Manohar. "The company's marketing team and agents work in tandem to market its UBI value propositions to all members of the value chain that deliver attractive and rapid return on investment to users of this system."
Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in implementing strategies that proactively create value for its customers with a focus on improving the return on the investment that customers make in its services or products. The award recognizes the company's inordinate focus on enhancing the value that its customers receive, beyond simply good customer service, leading to improved customer retention and, ultimately, customer base expansion.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.
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