Co-operative Insurance
Car insurance is the single biggest outlay for any young driver. Often, drivers under the age of 25 are paying more for their annual car insurance premiums than their car is actually worth, which makes driving prohibitively expensive. Of course, car insurance companies have good reason to charge such exorbitant rates. In the main, young drivers tend to have more accidents than those with more experience. However, this means that for young people who do drive carefully and safely and don’t have accidents, they still end up being penalized with the same high premiums, unless they for one of a number of telematics insurance schemes that are helping to save young drivers money. Coop car insurance is made simple with the Co op driving dashboard and should certainly be appealing to young people.
The Co-operative Insurance is one such insurance company. Aimed at drivers under 25, their telematics insurance system, known as Smartbox, can save young drivers over £800 a year on premiums. This black box insurance technology enables customers of the Co-operative to earn safer driving discounts, which can dramatically lower premiums.
Telematics insurance
The Co-operative’s Smartbox is a telematics insurance system that was first popularized in the United States. The Smartbox is fitted inside the car, normally inside the bonnet. It doesn’t interfere with the mechanics of the car in any way, but it does record how well the car is being driven. This data is used to establish how safe a the car is being driven.
The Smartbox telematics insurance system monitors all sorts of things, such as speed, acceleration, sudden braking and anything else that would indicate the car is being driven poorly. However, how Smartbox differs to other black box insurance systems is that it not only allows the insurance company to monitor the user’s driving, enabling the Co-operative to adjust insurance premiums in a “pay as you drive” scheme, but also it allows users to monitor their own performance and learn from their mistakes.
Personal dashboard
The online Smartbox dashboard provides a score so a driver knows how safely he or she has been driving the car, and also provides tips and demonstrates weaker areas that once improved can help reduce the insurance premiums. The driver score is not just affected by the way a young person drives a car, but can also be affected by the time of day (or night) a young person is on the road and the distances travelled.
This driver score ranges from 1 (very poor) to 5 (excellent), with discounts of up to 30 percent on offer for the highest score. However, premiums can go up as well as down if the driving is persistently considered unsafe. The Co-operative calculates a driver’s premium every three months, but the safe driving score is also used to calculate annual premiums, which can see even larger discounts after a year of safe driving.
Furthermore, as an added benefit, Smartbox also acts as a vehicle tracking system, which provides added security, further reducing the young person’s insurance premium. As telematics insurance systems go, with their online dashboard, simple driving score system and 90 day premium fluctuations, the Co-operative Smartbox is one of the smartest black box insurance system out there and is certainly worth considering for any young driver seeking cheaper car insurance. You can use the Co op dashboard login to make things easier and check out your cover and coop car insurance.
See our article here on the Telematics focused driver training offered by Co-op.
