Insurance companies offering lower bills in exchange for smart home data
Liberty Mutual and American Family Insurance Co. want to use the data generated by smart home devices to offer consumers a discount on insurance.
Smart homes can save their owners money by lowering a room’s temperature when it’s empty, or make them safer by locking doors and arming home security systems remotely.
Now a pair of insurance companies is offering some smart home owners a new way to save money – by turning over the data generated by their smart devices.
According to The Boston Globe, Liberty Mutual and American Family Insurance Co. have started offering discounts in seven states to customers who install wireless smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and agree to share data from these devices with the insurers.
The detectors will wirelessly transmit data to Nest, Google’s home automation system. Nest will then inform the insurance companies whether the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors have working batteries, whether the sensors are properly working, and will measure the strength of the home’s Wi-Fi connection.
Participants in the program could save 5 percent on their annual home insurance premium. According to the Globe:
“For a consumer paying the national average premium of $1,034 annually, the savings would be about $52.’’
Maine is the only New England state where the program is currently offered. The six other states are Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The Globe reports Liberty Mutual plans to introduce the program in other states later this year.
The program could help consumers by alerting them to problems with the smoke detector. But the data gathered from these devices could also be used by insurance companies to evaluate consumers’ personal behaviors, such whether or not the home’s smoke detectors are working correctly.
Read the entire Globe article here.
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