An expert panel at InsurtechLIVE will examine why adoption of electric, connected and automated cars in Australia lags global trends. 

EY partner of financial services technology consulting Andy Parton will host the Wheels of Change session with panellists Steve Cratchley and Michael Kwok at the conference in Sydney tomorrow.

Mr Cratchley is Suncorp motor insights and operations manager and Mr Kwok is Compass Internet of Things key accounts manager. 

“We’ll hear from Steve and Michael some of the reasons why [Australia lags other nations], and what that means for insurance in the coming years,” Mr Parton told insuranceNEWS.com.au. “What we’re really trying to understand in this session is, what does it mean for insurers and insurtech?”

Electric vehicles tend to reduce loss incident frequency as new technology lifts safety, but Mr Parton says the severity of incidents tends to be greater.  

“It’s partly because of the cost of vehicles: they can be quite expensive to repair. If there’s a fire incident, it’s pretty catastrophic.”

Mr Parton says EVs are “here to stay” and are already affecting the insurance industry. Insurers “need to be reacting to that in terms of understanding the risk of what they’re underwriting”.  

Autonomous vehicles are a “whole different proposition again”, he says.

“It's very difficult to predict what’s going to happen on an overall timeline. There have been all sorts of predictions of how prevalent and widespread autonomous vehicles will be and we’ve largely missed those predictive milestones.”  

Leading AV makers in the US and China are struggling to secure funding to solve all the problems faced, he says.

“It is progressing, but there’s still a huge number of hurdles – regulatory definitions of different levels of autonomy, public scepticism.”

Artificial intelligence will be a “massive accelerator of safety, but we’re still not there yet”, says Mr Parton, who will discuss how autonomous vehicles might “decimate or disrupt” the insurance sector, and what insurers and insurtechs can do in defence.

“We tend to overestimate the amount of change in the next few years but underestimate the amount of change in the medium term.

“I think some of this might creep up faster than we think as the rate of change accelerates.”

The sold-out InsurtechLIVE event will be held at Doltone House.