Platforms like Uber Freight, Convoy, Truckstop.com and DAT have digitized the way carriers find freight, and Brooklyn-based startup Koffie Labs is hoping to do the same for how fleets find truck insurance.
Koffie Labs bills itself as "a digital insurer purpose-built for the next generation of trucking and transportation," and "the first insurtech to integrate safety technology into underwriting, pricing and loss control," using telematics and advanced safety technology to underwrite trucking companies and reward fleets that invest in safety with discounted insurance premiums.
Offering fleets a discounted premium for the deployment of safety tech isn't anything new. The easiest way to get a quick – if not small – break on insurance rates is to incorporate telemetry data monitoring or a camera, but Koffie COO Mike Dorfman noted that underwriters currently, "don't actually do anything with that data on the pricing side," he said. "They say, 'We'll give you a 5% discount if you tell us you have a telematics system,'" but then underwriters do not figure out how much of difference they are making and using that data to reward fleets on an ongoing basis.
This is where Koffie steps in.
Koffie has partnered with technology providers to offer equipment that captures fleet-wide driving habits through road- and driver-facing cameras and telemetry data through the driver's ELD. Despite a heavy integration with Koffie Labs, the fleet owns the equipment and all the data it generates, and has the ability to monitor all the reporting data at all times.
Koffie also monitors the data to "conduct loss control reports [and] send risky driving behaviors to management in order to get driver coaching and mitigate risky driving behavior," Dorfman said. This puts Koffie Labs – an insurance provider, remember – in the role of de facto safety manager, which Dorfman said gives smaller carriers the kind of resources and technologies that large fleets have had for years. When a driver displays less-than-desirable on-road manners, Dorfman said his company would, using the data its has gathered, work with the carrier to improve their quality of driving. Drivers are assigned a score so the fleet manager would have a clear understanding of who are its best (or safest) drivers.
Rate adjustments are made annually. Credits are applied at the end of each policy year, Dorfman said, with any additional performance-based discounts and credits made upon policy renewal. Dorfman expects Koffie Labs' premiums to be "competitive" when it launches later this year, and about 25% cheaper than market averages for the safest operators.
