Swiss Re, China’s Baidu to explore autonomous driving insurance

Global reinsurer  Swiss Re has partnered with Chinese technology firm Baidu to advance insurance and risk management for autonomous driving and autonomous vehicles.

Autonomous driving poses new challenges to the insurance industry, including rapid technological upgrades, increasingly diversified risks and limitation of data availability.

The goal is to further develop the autonomous driving industry and create a new industry paradigm for insurance protection to meet the needs of technology companies.

The partnership will develop insurance solutions covering the entire value chain of autonomous driving, including the selection of risk factors, product pricing, claims and underwriting data standards. The solutions will be customised based on Baidu’s technology and the data insights brought by Swiss Re and Baidu.

The first focus of this partnership was the launch of autonomous valet parking insurance, the industry’s first ever insurance solution for Apollo Valet Parking (AVP) – an automated valet parking product designed by Baidu Apollo. Future collaboration between Swiss Re and Baidu will cover risk management research and insurance innovation for autonomous driving computing platforms, intelligent cockpits, robotaxi (driverless taxis) and other automated driving products.

Russell Higginbotham (pictured), Swiss Re’s chief executive officer of reinsurance, Asia & regional president Asia, said: “Our partnership with Baidu is a milestone in Swiss Re’s efforts to access new risk pools and close the protection gap through Swiss Re’s risk management expertise and innovation capabilities. By combining our respective risk knowledge and insights, we hope to jointly explore and develop innovative products and solutions, catalyse the transformation of the autonomous driving value chain and further advance the mobility ecosystem.”

Andrea Keller, head of automotive and mobility solutions at Swiss Re, added: “Together with our partner Baidu, we analyse how automated cars perceive their surroundings and how they process that information and respond to it. Our goal is to understand how such vehicles behave differently than human-driven ones and quantify these differences. Ultimately, we aim to bring motor insurance products to the next level of innovation.”