Enacting Actuarial Fairness in Insurance: From Fair Discrimination to Behaviour-based Fairness

‘Happy failures’: Experimentation with behaviour-based personalisation in car insurance

“…Things can go wrong but after a while these biases will be averaged out towards a correct measurement. (interview, VP Smart Mobility, Makecents, 10 May 2016, authors' emphasis) Unlike in other experimental practices of behaviourbased personalisation in car insurance (using black boxes and dongles) (Meyers and Van Hoyweghen, 2018a), the specific events (when and where they occurred) could not be consulted by the individual clients/participants. Royal Direct considered the instalment of such an immediate feedback infrastructure to be too risky, as the measurement biases (due to the smartphone technology) could become a source of distrust for the customers/participants during their participation in the study:…”

“…The driving style study also included a specific 'driving style coaching' part. Driving style coaching is a recurring theme in experimental practices of behaviour-based personalisation, as it allows individuals to adjust their behaviour to a better drive or lifestyle (Meyers and Van Hoyweghen, 2018a). This form of 'experimental manipulation' was set up in such a way that it aimed at finding a balance in the attention of the users.…”

“…Another early adopter in this space is Vitality, which has partnered with Apple to offer discounts on the Apple Watches to consumers, providing benefits and rewards in the form of services and discounts for adopting a healthy lifestyle (French and Kneale, 2009;Gr€ oger, 2014;Krempl, 2015). Both Oscar and Vitality are exemplars of 'behaviour-based personalisation' in insurance, involving practices aimed at 'the personalisation of products and goods where markets and services are increasingly focused on the behaviour and lifestyle of actors, particularly in insurance markets' (Meyers and Van Hoyweghen, 2018a).…”

Who, or what, is insurtech personalizing?: persons, prices and the historical classifications of risk

“…Rorty insists that given the dramatic discontinuities in how persons have been characterised and rendered in moral and legal practices over time and across cultures there can really be no such thing. Human beings, as Marcel Mauss (1979) famously insisted, are specified in all societies but they are not necessarily individualised as 'unique entities coincident with a distinct consciousness and will' (Hirst and Woolley, 1982: 118). By describing the idea as an insurance policy, Rorty refers to the work people want the category to do; perhaps being a person secures certain rights, to be treated with regard, as rational, thinking, well intentioned beings.…”

“…There are around 850,000 telematics based motor insurance policies in existence in the UK. 19 The ability to track the driving habits of individuals, and to use this information to offer more variegated prices to members of riskier groups may be considered 'actuarially fairer' (Meyers & Van Hoyweghen, 2017) than pricing based on socio-demographically constituted groups of person. And yet the 'personalization' at work here does not entail a drilling down into the depths of the person.…”