Swiss Re and Daimler Insurance Services are jointly launching a managing general agent focused on automotive and mobility insurance.

Dubbed Movinx, the aim of the 50/50 joint venture is to develop fully digital automotive and mobility insurance products, with a focus on flexible and customer-centric products.

Swiss Re is a global reinsurer. Daimler Insurance Services provides auto insurance and other services for vehicles that are part of German corporate parent Daimler Group/Daimler AG, which manufactures the Mercedes-Benz automobiles.

The MGA’s first insurance products and services are planned to launch in France in 2021. In the coming years, further market entries are planned across Europe, in the Americas, and in Asia. Sebastiaan Bongers, head Mobility Ventures at Swiss Re, and Andreas Roth, head Digital Insurance Model at Daimler Insurance Services, will lead the new company. Offices opened in Berlin in October.

“We believe that partnering with Daimler Insurance Services and establishing Movinx will take us to the next level in innovating mobility insurance,” Pravina Ladva, Swiss Re’s Digital Transformation Officer, said in prepared remarks. “Our joint long-term ambition is to unlock an ecosystem interplay where insurance supports the introduction of new technologies such as advanced driving assistance systems and autonomous cars as well as new business models in the mobility area,”

Ingo Telschow, CEO Daimler Insurance Services, said that the joint effort accomplishes a number of new things.

“By joining forces with Swiss Re we can lead transformation in an evolving market environment and advance insurance business,” Telschow said in prepared remarks. “We will establish a new business model as well as co-create and co-own an insurance platform. This platform enables easy and efficient insurance purchase and customer-centric services by using real time data.”

Telschow added that the effort brings Daimler deeper into the insurance business “value change,” enabling it to have a greater influence in areas including product development and pricing.

Insurance needs to evolve along with the rapid transformation being seen in the automotive industry and the motor insurance sector, Swiss Re and Daimler in a joint statement, citing as examples e-mobility and automated driving and the shift from ownership to usage.

Instead of today’s rather short-term oriented partnerships between car manufacturers and various insurers, Movinx will make insurance a part of the vehicle purchase, the companies said. The joint venture will be open to cooperation with other stakeholders such as car manufacturers or, more generally, mobility service providers.

Future partners will benefit from this co-owned insurance MGA and be able to offer white-labeled products and services globally, the companies said, noting that manufactures can deal with one insurance provider through the new system rather than many.

Movinx will then partner with locally licensed insurers to deliver its products and services to the end-customers and cover insurance risk. Insurers and other stakeholders can connect to the IT platform and profit from centralized operations and automated processes supported by a combination of machine- and deep-learning technologies.

By connecting to the MGA’s platform, insurers benefit from not having to build tailored and quickly changing insurance programs, the companies said.

Source: Swiss Re, Daimler

*A version of this story ran previously in our sister publication Insurance Journal.