Disruptive Innovation and the Impact of Fully Autonomous Vehicles on the Auto Insurance Industry

Abstract

This piece marries the theories of microeconomics, insurance and disruptive innovation and applies them to self-driving cars in the auto insurance industry. Through a qualitative forecast of the auto insurance industry using forecasts of the impact of self driving cars, it is predicted that large, established firms will have difficulty and may fail when dealing with all of the changes that self-driving cars will bring once they fully penetrate the automobile market. The argument is made through employing a hypothetical rate model and basic rate making principals. The rate making model is manipulated with predicted aspects of self-driving cars in mind.