托福閱讀:實(shí)時可獲大數(shù)據(jù)改變保險(xiǎn)業(yè)

　　Real-time insurance Pay per-risk

　　The availability of huge volumes of data in real time is changing insurance

　　實(shí)時保險(xiǎn) 按次計(jì)價

　　實(shí)時可獲的大量數(shù)據(jù)正在改變保險(xiǎn)業(yè)

　　EVEN at weddings or whale watches, the buzz of a drone is no longer a surprise. Drone photography is booming. Gartner, a consultancy, says some 174,000 drones will be sold for commercial use around the world this year, and 2.8m to consumers. It is easy to imagine a few might fall out of the sky, causing damage the pilot cannot hope to pay for: crushed wedding cakes, injured spectators and so on. Amid scores of near-misses, several incidents have already occurred. In 2014, for example, a drone filming a triathlon in Australia crashed on a competitor’s head. 即便是在婚禮現(xiàn)場或是觀看鯨魚時，無人機(jī)的嗡嗡聲也已不是什么新鮮事。無人機(jī)攝影正在蓬勃發(fā)展。咨詢公司高德納(Gartner)稱，今年全球?qū)⑹鄢黾s17.4萬架商用無人機(jī)和280萬架消費(fèi)級無人機(jī)。不難想象，其中一些可能會從空中墜落，造成操控員不得不賠償?shù)膿p失，例如壓碎的婚禮蛋糕、受傷的觀眾等等。很多時候險(xiǎn)情僥幸得以避免，但也有幾次事故真的發(fā)生了。2014年，澳大利亞的一架無人機(jī)在拍攝鐵人三項(xiàng)賽時砸中了一位參賽者的頭。

　　Clearly, drone-users need insurance. Typically, risks are insured through the payment of an annual premium. Insure4drones, a British specialist, charges £738.86 ($1,000) to cover a DJI Phantom, a bestselling drone, for a year. From October Flock, a London startup, will offer insurance on a flight-by-flight basis, at the push of a button in an app, to any commercial drone-operator in Britain. Cover for amateur pilots will soon follow. Costs will be about £5 per hour of flight, according to Allianz, an underwriter. 顯然，無人機(jī)用戶需要保險(xiǎn)。他們一般通過支付保險(xiǎn)年費(fèi)來覆蓋風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。英國專業(yè)保險(xiǎn)公司Insure4drones為最暢銷的無人機(jī)大疆精靈(Phantom)開出的保費(fèi)是每年738.86英鎊(1000美元)。從10月起，倫敦創(chuàng)業(yè)公司Flock將向全英國的商用無人機(jī)運(yùn)營商提供按次計(jì)費(fèi)的保險(xiǎn)，只需在一款應(yīng)用上點(diǎn)擊按鈕即可。針對非專業(yè)無人機(jī)操控員的保險(xiǎn)業(yè)務(wù)也將很快跟上。安聯(lián)保險(xiǎn)公司稱，每飛行一小時的保費(fèi)約為5英鎊。

　　Flock’s app relies on a wide range of data. Weather forecasts come from IBM, a computing giant which, having spent over $2bn on The Weather Company in 2015, now offers forecasts to within a few hundred metres, and over a period of minutes. Live information about nearby aircraft is provided by a software company called Snowflake, which tracks aeroplanes around the planet. Flock also considers local topography, such as proximity to churches, hospitals and schools, as well as roads and traffic levels. It also monitors the drone itself, gathering data as it flies to build a risk profile for that machine. All these numbers are crunched when a customer requests insurance through the app. As well as offering a quote, the app tells pilots how to reduce their risks. Flock的應(yīng)用倚賴各種各樣的數(shù)據(jù)。首先是來自計(jì)算巨頭IBM的天氣預(yù)報(bào)。IBM在2015年斥資逾20億美元收購了天氣公司(The Weather Company)，現(xiàn)在能提供精確到幾百米范圍、幾分鐘內(nèi)的天氣預(yù)報(bào)。一家名為雪花(Snowflake)的軟件公司提供了關(guān)于附近飛行器的實(shí)時信息。該公司追蹤全球范圍內(nèi)的飛機(jī)。Flock還會考慮當(dāng)?shù)氐牡匦蔚孛�，比如到教堂、醫(yī)院和學(xué)校的距離，以及道路和交通狀況。它也會監(jiān)控?zé)o人機(jī)本身，收集其飛行數(shù)據(jù)，為其建立風(fēng)險(xiǎn)檔案。當(dāng)用戶通過應(yīng)用要求投保時，應(yīng)用會分析所有這些數(shù)據(jù)。除了給出報(bào)價，應(yīng)用還會告訴操控員如何降低風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。

　　Allianz then converts Flock’s data-driven risk scores into a price. The attraction for Allianz is acquiring customers cheaply. “Rather than humans sitting and writing business, the algorithm does it on the spot,” says Tom Chamberlain, who manages its aviation underwriting. 然后，安聯(lián)會把Flock根據(jù)數(shù)據(jù)得出的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)評分轉(zhuǎn)換成一個價格。對安聯(lián)來說，這種方式的吸引力在于獲得客戶的成本很低。該公司負(fù)責(zé)航空保險(xiǎn)的湯姆·張伯倫(Tom Chamberlain)說：“算法隨時隨地就能搞定，不需要人們坐下來寫保單�！�

　　Conventional insurance works by pooling individual risks and then setting a price for that group—new drivers under 30, say. But that process can be much refined if the objects and people being insured can report to the insurer automatically, and if there is a wealth of data on the external environment. As an ever-growing number of sensors—in phones or watches, drones or cars—gather ever-greater volumes of data, more and more activities can be assessed for real-time risk (though in the absence of pooling, some risks may become prohibitively expensive to insure). 傳統(tǒng)保險(xiǎn)的運(yùn)營方式是將個體的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)匯聚起來，然后為這個群體設(shè)定一個統(tǒng)一的價格，比如30歲以下的新手司機(jī)。但是，如果投保的人或物能夠自動向保險(xiǎn)公司報(bào)告，保險(xiǎn)公司也擁有大量有關(guān)外部環(huán)境的數(shù)據(jù)，那么這個過程就可以大大改進(jìn)。隨著手機(jī)、手表、無人機(jī)、汽車等設(shè)備里安裝的傳感器越來越多，收集的數(shù)據(jù)也不斷增加，越來越多的活動能夠?qū)崿F(xiàn)實(shí)時的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)評估(盡管在缺乏風(fēng)險(xiǎn)匯聚和分擔(dān)的情況下，要為某些風(fēng)險(xiǎn)尋求保險(xiǎn)可能會變得過于昂貴而無法實(shí)現(xiàn))。

　　Flock is not alone. Verifly, a New York startup, competes with it in America. Root, a car insurer, offers drivers insurance based on their minute-to-minute behaviour behind the wheel. It even offers a discount to Tesla drivers if their car spends plenty of time in autonomous mode. Slice, a San Francisco startup, lets its customers insure their houses and cars for the time they are used on services such as Uber and Airbnb. Trov, also from San Francisco, insures personal possessions for short periods. Flock并非一枝獨(dú)秀。紐約創(chuàng)業(yè)公司Verifly是它在美國的競爭對手。汽車保險(xiǎn)公司Root根據(jù)司機(jī)每一分鐘的駕駛表現(xiàn)向他們提供保險(xiǎn)。如果特斯拉車主花大量時間使用自動駕駛模式，Root甚至?xí)�給他們打折。當(dāng)人們把自己的房屋和汽車用于優(yōu)步和愛彼迎這類服務(wù)平臺時，可以通過舊金山的創(chuàng)業(yè)公司Slice投保。另一家同樣位于舊金山的公司Trov為個人財(cái)產(chǎn)提供短期保險(xiǎn)。

　　Flock’s chief executive, Ed Klinger, says that he eventually wants to insure all kinds of future autonomous activities, from taxi rides to rolling delivery pods. He argues that selling insurance through annual premiums is inflexible. It less easily takes advantage of the large volume of live data that can now help estimate the risk posed by a given activity at a given time. For instance, a passenger in an autonomous taxi may be at far lower risk if the trip takes place outside rush hour, or in weather conditions in which the car performs at its best. Firms that dispatch delivery drones might use Flock to calculate the risk for each flight automatically, depending on cargo and address. Flock的首席執(zhí)行官埃德·科林格(Ed Klinger)說，最終，他想要承保未來各種各樣無人參與的活動，從無人駕駛出租車到帶滾輪的送貨機(jī)器人。他認(rèn)為收年費(fèi)賣保險(xiǎn)不夠靈活。這樣不太容易利用大量的實(shí)時數(shù)據(jù)，而這些數(shù)據(jù)如今可幫助評估特定時間內(nèi)由特定活動帶來的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。例如，如果在非高峰時段出行，或者出行時的天氣狀況最適合汽車行駛，那么乘坐自動駕駛出租車的乘客面臨的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)要低得多。使用無人機(jī)送貨的公司可能會用Flock來自動計(jì)算每次飛行的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)，這取決于貨物和投遞地址。

　　The business model is in its infancy, but on-demand insurance seems bound to grow. In a world where consumers expect push-button convenience from their services, they will demand the same of the insurance those services rely on. 這樣的商業(yè)模式還處于起步階段，但按需保險(xiǎn)看來勢必會增長。在如今的世界，消費(fèi)者期望點(diǎn)擊按鈕就能方便地使用服務(wù)，他們也會對這些服務(wù)所依賴的保險(xiǎn)提出同樣的要求。