Swiss Re partners Baidu on autonomous vehicle insurance

Autonomous driving is set to pose a host of new challenges to the insurance industry, including rapid technological upgrades, increasingly diversified risks and limitation of data availability.

The Swiss Re-Baidu partnership will develop insurance services covering the entire value chain of autonomous driving, including the selection of risk factors, product pricing, claims and underwriting data standards.

The first focus of the deal is the launch of autonomous valet parking insurance for Baidu’s Apollo Valet Parking product.

In the future, the partners will work on risk management research and insurance offerings for autonomous driving computing platforms, intelligent cockpits, robotaxis and other automated driving products.

Andrea Keller, head, automotive and mobility solutions, Swiss Re, says: “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.”