How’s your driving? If you use an app insurers could be watching

LONDON :Apps that let you book a ride to work or borrow a car for your next vacation are feeding into a revolution in auto insurance -- while also raising some privacy red flags. “It’s not so much about an individual’s story there, but at an aggregate level across millions of trips, patterns exist that actually predict risk," Turo’s U.K. head Xavier Collins said in an interview. The famously staid and risk averse auto insurance industry is slowly finding ways to use new types of data analysis to help it make decisions about who to cover, how much to charge and which customers are most likely to leave for a competitor, said Ingo Blöink, a consultant in Germany who was previously the European director of Daimler Insurance Services. Privacy questions At an aggregate level, this type of data is “definitely something that’s of interest to us and we are exploring," said Martin Hoff, Allianz’s head of product management and innovation, noting, however, that it isn’t being used currently. Turo’s users currently consent to share data that lets the firm determine their likelihood of getting into an accident or making an insurance claim, identify unsafe driving behavior and conduct investigations and risk assessments.