Allstate Corp. is “researching” opportunities to offer carshare insurance coverage, as the auto insurance marketplace continues to evolve, Auto Finance News has learned.
And, given the amount of time that it took Allstate to launch its rideshare insurance offering [just under 12 months], carshare coverage could be offered within a year.
“We are looking into researching it and understanding that [carshare] model as well,” Geoff Williams, Allstate’s vice president of auto insurance, told Auto Finance News. “If the market becomes big enough, we are going to create solutions for our customers. It’s something that we are looking into, and we might be coming out with someday, but we are trying to research that right now to make sure there is marketplace and there is a need there.”
To that end, Allstate’s rideshare insurance — called Ride for Hire — took the agency roughly nine to 12 months from the time the agency started talking about the coverage to the launch date in two states in December 2015, Williams said.
“You have to understand the marketplace first,” Williams said. “How big it is, and to make sure we can define the needs.” Then, given the market is highly regulated, Allstate needed to talk about the product offering first with its insurance department.
Most recently, Allstate introduced the Ride for Hire optional add-on coverage in Massachusetts, bringing the total states it is offered in, to 36. “We are trying to get into another 13 states by the fourth quarter of this year, and add the final state in the first quarter of next year,” Williams said.
Allstate’s rideshare insurance covers the period when a driver has turned on the ride-hailing app and is waiting for a customer. Once the driver accepts a fare and picks the customer up, the rideshare company provides its own commercial coverage through the Transportation Network Company. Allstate expects that, on average, an Allstate customer will pay roughly $15 to $20 each year for the added protection, according to a company press release.
