IMS, OPES partner in Vietnam mobile telematics insurance

Britain-based IMS, a connected insurance solutions business, has teamed up with Vietnamese company OPES to supply smartphone app-based telematics insurance to car drivers in Vietnam.

The new product, “O∙Car”, using the IMS One App SDK to deliver its core capabilities, launched to market earlier this month, IMS announced Monday.

Digital insurer OPES is owned by Hanoi-headquartered VPBank, and according to IMS CEO Paul Stacy, the product is the first wholly digital, telematics-based insurance offering in Vietnam, aimed at about three million car drivers in the country.

Telematics insurance is a policy where an insurer monitors how its clients drive and adjusts their costs based on their driving habits.

Stacy said: “O∙Car leverages the IMS One App SDK along with our patented IMS Wedge (IMS’s patented BLE IOT sensor add-on) which helps identify the insured’s vehicle. Together, this connected insurance technology evaluates driving style and the resulting data is used to personalize the insurance product offered to OPES customers.” He added that OPES will also run competitions and other campaigns outside the app to reward good driving behavior.

Stacy said in the announcement: “We’ve been working with OPES and their parent VPBank to trial the app among their own employees and customers. Because the traffic in Vietnam is highly congested and slow moving, the IMS analytics team had to develop a whole new driver behavior scoring system for the Vietnamese market.

OPES and IMS tested with thousands of drivers and more than 60,000 trips to develop the scoring criteria.”

Dang Hoang Tung, CEO at OPES said: “With this innovative and new product, we want to help promote and build a safe driving culture among Vietnamese drivers.”

Stacy elaborated that IMS thinks something similar would apply to other Southeast Asian markets, with around 76 million registered car drivers in ASEAN, representing a huge untapped market for telematics and connected insurance.

OPES, formed in 2018, says it has almost six million clients in Vietnam to date. The ecosystem of its parent company VPBank includes VPBank SMBC Finance Co. Ltd., Vietnam’s leading consumer finance company, in which Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) holds a 49% stake and VPBank keeps 50%.