The incorporation of technology into the insurance industry is becoming more apparent every day. The insurance sector is partnering up with technology companies to provide value-added products to consumers, many of which can be of great assistance to women.
One of the most useful technological tools in insurance for women is the telematics device which is installed in her motor vehicle. Some of these devices will send an alert to the service provider when the driver is involved in a collision where the impact exceeds a certain g-force.
The service provider will then dispatch someone to the exact location of the collision to provide emergency assistance.
This provides great peace of mind for female drivers to know that should she be involved in a serious vehicle accident, assistance will be on its way in the unfortunate event that she is unconscious or too seriously injured to request assistance herself.
Some of the telematics service providers also have the ability to set-up high risk zones which will then alert someone, such as a family member, should the vehicle go into one of these zones.
This is extremely useful in the case of a high-jacking and can help locate victims.
However, telematics devices are not just used for security reasons, one of the other advantages of telematics is that they can track driving behaviour.
Some insurance companies are starting to use this information to give additional discounts on risk premium for good driving behaviour.

Many insurance providers now offer their policyholders the option to add home and roadside assist to their policies.
The companies providing these services also now have smartphone apps to make this service even more accessible.
This means instead of having to call a call centre to get roadside assistance, the woman can simply use the app to request roadside assistance and their actual location will be sent through to the service provider, making it easier for the assistance vehicle to find them.
The added benefit for women is that they can be rest assured they will be found if they are stranded next to the road due to the ability to more accurately pinpoint their location.
Another type of technology that is very useful are geyser sensors.
These devices are installed on the geyser and will notify the homeowner if their geyser is leaking and, in some cases, will actually switch off the water and power supply to the geyser.
This way, the amount of damage ordinarily caused by a burst geyser can be significantly reduced – saving lots of money and much frustration.
In today’s busy world, most women find it hard to balance their time carefully between their career, their family and other household related tasks.
One of the biggest time wasters is getting quotes for their insurance company in the event of a home burglary. However, there are now a number of service providers that insurance companies can use to get comparative quotes for policyholders.
This makes the whole claim process much easier for the client as it saves her from the unnecessary effort of getting quotes, especially for more general type of appliances like televisions, washing machines, fridges and so forth.
In the insurance industry one of the first areas to really make use of technology was the quoting process.
To make it easier and more accessible for clients to get quotes, many insurance companies have now have online quoting solutions. Insurance companies also provide product information on their websites to enable clients to make a better-informed decision about which product is right for them.
There is also now a more definite drive in the industry to start enabling clients and brokers to manage their own policies and to easily access their policy schedules, which is also advantageous for the insurance company as its employees have more time to address insurance related service to their clients as opposed to administrative services.
Lastly, but not the least, as we all know the process of registering claims is very cumbersome. More insurance companies are also now looking at solutions to make this process more efficient by using technology.
With technology developing at a rapid pace, there are bound to be more exciting ways that technology can assist women when it comes to insurance in the near future. Watch this space.
By Zelda Joubert, Business Information Systems Analyst at MUA

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