ABSTRACT

In the insurance industry, digital technologies have been harnessed in pursuit of three goals: personalising services for customers, obtaining information about them and nudging them towards behaviour that diminishes their risks. This article examines two Finnish companies that use self-tracking practices and sensor-generated data in life insurance products. It investigates the knowledges and practices mobilised in a design process that aims to transform the customer relationship from reactive to proactive. Insurers use three main strategies, educating, incentivising and partnering, in striving to align their aims with those of their customers. Instead of confirming narratives of ‘digital disruption’, this study argues that insurance should be understood as a historically specific technology within regulatory constraints and market frictions. The new policies’ most distinctive disruptive feature is the technological mediation of the customer relationship. Critical voices rightly point out that behaviour-based insurance carries the potential for discrimination and dataveillance. Our study shows, however, that critique remains abstract or even hypothetical if it does not consider existing practices and the difficulties that insurers face when implementing their ideas.

摘要

在保险业，数字技术被用来实现三个目标：为客户提供个性化服务、获取有关他们的信息并促使他们采取降低风险的行为。本文考察了两家在人寿保险产品中使用自我跟踪实践和传感器生成数据的芬兰公司。它调查了设计过程中调动的知识和实践，旨在将客户关系从被动转变为主动。保险公司使用三种主要策略，教育、激励和合作，努力使他们的目标与客户的目标保持一致。这项研究没有证实“数字颠覆”的说法，而是认为保险应该被理解为在监管限制和市场摩擦中具有历史意义的特定技术。新政策最显着的颠覆性特征是客户关系的技术中介。批评人士正确地指出，基于行为的保险具有歧视和数据监控的潜力。然而，我们的研究表明，如果不考虑现有的实践以及保险公司在实施他们的想法时面临的困难，这种批评仍然是抽象的，甚至是假设性的。