Car insurance prices to be based on facebook posts

One of the biggest insurance companies in the UK plans to use social media to analyse car owners to set the price of their insurance.

Car Insurance Based on Social Media Activity?

Yes, quite possibly one of the most bonkers thing I’ve heard all year. Admiral insurance will use Facebook to analyse first-time car owners, looking into personality traits that are linked to safe driving. The service will be named ‘firstcarquote‘, and will be looking into a variety of traits, for example; how well organised someone is by looking at if they use times and locations when meeting other people. The algorithm will also analyse sentence length, structure and use of words.

Thankfully If you’re a regular at car meet-ups or are partial to the occasional drift (we don’t condone drifting) then the algorithm won’t be able to look at photos. Although, the algorithm will look back at historic posts, focusing mainly on the past six months.

A statement released on Admirals website said:

‘firstcarquote is a new insurance service created by Admiral to help people who are buying or driving their first car.

‘As well as helping new drivers get cheaper car insurance, firstcarquote can help drivers who haven’t yet bought a car figure out which make and model will be cheapest for them to insure.

‘New drivers are often quoted much higher insurance premiums as they have little driving history, zero No Claims Bonus and are viewed as ‘high risk’.

‘But we want to help make sure safe drivers aren’t penalised and get the best price possible.

‘To do this, we’ll look at your Facebook profile to help us get a better understanding of the type of driver you are.

‘There’s a proven link between personality and how people drive, and our clever technology allows us to predict who is likely to be a safe driver.’

If, by now, you’re getting a little bit worried, you’ll be happy to know that the service is voluntary, Admiral have been quick to state that the service will only offer discounts rather than increased premiums, but haven’t ruled out any plans to expand the service further.