Ingenie Telematics
For young people looking for cheaper car insurance and who don’t want to be restricted by strict nighttime curfews, Ingenie is a good solution. Aimed at young drivers (17-25) who struggle to get affordable car insurance, Ingenie is a telematics insurance system that uses black box technology to assess driver safety. Unlike other black box insurance companies, there is no night time curfew with Ingenie, and rather than reward safer driving with a discounts off the following year’s premium, the telematics insurance company rewards safe drivers with quarterly discounts, reducing direct debit payments, enabling young drivers to save money throughout the year. As with many Ingenie car insurance reviews it’s important to think about car insurance age groups and car insurance factors affecting price as we did with our Insure the box review.
This does also mean that premiums can go up throughout the year with persistent unsafe driving, but there is a capped maximum price that premiums won’t exceed. With this three-month reward scheme, a young person’s driving is assessed regularly, which is a great way to ensure a person is driving safely throughout the year, and to assist in the development of driving skills. Furthermore, to check their progress, young drivers can use the Ingenie app on their smartphones.
Community based black box insurance
One of the unique aspects of the reward as you drive scheme adopted by Ingenie is that it is not governed by a strict criteria for driver safety. While the black box insurance system monitors variables, such as speed, acceleration, sudden braking, swerving, and when and where a person is driving, rewards are offered to the safest drivers in “the community” rather than through a scoring system.
This means singular incidents or occasional lapses of judgement won’t see a driver automatically punished for unsafe driving, as progress is assessed over three months and compared to everybody else with an Ingenie telematics insurance policy. This also means young drivers are not restricted by curfews or mileage and can drive when, where and how far they like.
Telematics insurance system
As with other black box insurance policies, a telematics system has to be fitted to every policyholder’s car. Ingenie do not charge for this service, although if you change vehicle during the policy you will have to pay £100 to have the box transferred from one car to the other. The smartphone-sized device doesn’t affect how the car can be driven and is a merely a passive monitoring device. It has an inbuilt GPS system and offers the added benefit of acting as a vehicle tracker in case the car ever gets stolen.
Ingenie is tailored very much to helping young people improve their driving and the smartphone app is a simple way to monitor progress. Furthermore, with a quarterly review that offers a discount on monthly direct debit payments, there is far more of an incentive to improve driver safety than just rewarding safe driving with a reduced premium in the following year.
Another thing that Ingenie do well is assist young people in choosing cars that qualify for lower premiums. As the company take pains to point out, the price of a vehicle is rarely the governing factor when it comes to insurance costs, and they provide a detailed list of cars that qualify for lower cost insurance in order to assist young people in keeping their premiums low. Be sure to check out our other reviews such as our Insure the box car insurance review.
See here for our article on Ingenie wants tax breaks for telematics providers.
