• Since beginning our journey in 2011, Nationwide has solidified its position as an industry leader in the telematics and connected car space
• Award recognizes Nationwide’s robust suite of innovative personal and commercial lines solutions
• Nationwide has collected more than five billion miles of driving behavior

Telematics, or usage-based insurance (UBI), is on track to become the insurance of choice for American drivers as they learn the benefits of customizing their premium based on personal driving habits. That’s why Nationwide has made significant investments in personal and commercial lines telematics to establish our company on the leading edge of this fast-moving trend.

This week, we were honored to be recognized as an industry leader by TU Automotive, which selected Nationwide as the TU Automotive Connected Car Insurer of the Year 2020. TU Automotive is a digital community providing the auto tech industry with extensive daily news and analysis and industry events.

This award is the result of a journey that began in 2011, when Nationwide was among the first to recognize the incredible potential for usage-based insurance to give drivers greater personalization and help agents offer better solutions for their customers.

Nationwide’s Telematics Journey:

In 2011, we launched our personal lines telematics program with SmartRide®, and building upon what we learned, launched SmartMiles®, our pay-per-mile program. Since then we have captured more than five billion miles of driving behavior. We were one of the first to introduce a mobile telematics solution and the first to implement a full connected car experience. We have a strong foundation for the future with more OEM partnerships (Original Equipment Manufacturers like Ford and Toyota) than any competitor.

As a result, Nationwide personal lines telematics customers have been enjoying significant savings. SmartRide customers receive a 10% enrolment discount and can earn up to 40% after we monitor their safe driving behavior and mileage for a few months. SmartMiles offers customers a flexible monthly premium that is based on how many miles they drive, which can save low-mileage drivers an average of 25%. SmartMiles is available in more states than any pay-per-mile program offered in the industry.

Commercial Lines Solutions

In 2018, Nationwide made the decision to expand its commitment to telematics and innovation by creating a telematics and connected business program for commercial lines. The vision was to establish a comprehensive and end-to-end adoption of telematics and IoT (Internet of Things) to enable a connected culture of safety, insights and value for commercial lines customers. A year later, the Nationwide Vantage 360 program was launched.

By focusing on customer and agent needs, it became clear that commercial lines telematics-based solutions needed to look beyond just a discount offering and consider that business customers come in all shapes and sizes.

For small business customers, where cost-savings is a primary value concern, Nationwide partnered with Cambridge Mobile Telematics to offer a fleet tracking and UBI program. This mobile app + tag product delivers basic fleet and driver tracking, along with phone usage monitoring, discount opportunities and driver rewards.

Nationwide partnered with fleet telematics providers, Azuga and Zubie, to offer more robust solutions for businesses with larger fleets that need features better suited for vehicle management and administration, along with the ability to monitor vehicle health and maintenance.

And earlier this month, we announced a new partnership with Samsara to enable commercial trucking customers to take advantage of easy-to-implement fleet management with a new video telematics solution available to Nationwide Excess and Surplus (E&S) customers.

As we continue to build and deploy our capabilities, we’re excited about extending our telematics offering to our agricultural insurance business.

We were honored to accept the TU Automotive Connected Car 2020 Insurer of the Year award, which validates what we’ve known for some time: Nationwide is leading the industry when it comes to offering innovative new telematics and connected car solutions for customers no matter what, how or why they’re driving.

We look forward to working with our Independent Agent partners to help them strengthen and expand relationships with their personal and commercial lines customers by utilizing the full suite of Nationwide telematics and connected car solutions.