Welcome to the Insurance Telematics Podcast

Introduction: Revolutionizing Insurance Through Telematics

In this premiere episode of the Insurance Telematics Podcast, Yasmin and Harald, the CEO and founder of Dolphin Technologies, introduce listeners to the themes and ideas that will shape the series. Broadcasting from Vienna, Austria, they outline how insurance telematics can save lives, reduce environmental impact, and offer significant value to insurers. From personal anecdotes to industry insights, this episode sets the stage for a deep dive into a future-oriented field blending behavioral economics, AI, and cutting-edge mobile technology.

Meet the Hosts

Yasmin welcomes listeners to the podcast, expressing excitement and a bit of nervousness. Harald joins in, confirming his anticipation. The duo shares that this podcast has been a long time coming and that they are broadcasting from Vienna, Austria.

What Is Dolphin Technologies?

Harald explains Dolphin Technologies as a Vienna-based company focused on insurance telematics. Their mission is to reduce road fatalities and encourage more ecological mobility. The core strategy involves informing drivers about risky behaviors and providing actionable feedback:

• Alerting users about dangerous conditions (e.g., icy roads)
• Encouraging safe, sustainable driving habits
• Offering personalized risk assessments and suggestions

The Benefits of Insurance Telematics

• Reduced Claims: Lower accident rates mean reduced payouts.
• Fair Risk Assessment: Young drivers, often unfairly charged higher premiums, can prove their safe habits.
• Customer Engagement: Creating meaningful touchpoints through contextual, event-based communication.
• Environmental Impact: Safe driving correlates with eco-friendly driving.

A Life-Changing Personal Story

Harald shares a personal story about a severe car accident he experienced in his early twenties. He fell asleep at the wheel and crashed, only to be found by chance. This near-death experience partly inspired the creation of Dolphin Technologies. The story underscores the life-saving potential of real-time risk alerts and accident detection that telematics can offer today.

Why Insurance Is More Exciting Than It Sounds

Despite its reputation, insurance is closely tied to technological, geopolitical, and environmental changes. Harald explains:

• New tech = new risks = new insurance needs
• Insurance is impacted by global events (wars, climate change)
• It plays a fundamental role in protecting what we value most

A Sneak Peek at Future Episodes

The episode ends with a teaser of upcoming topics:

• Evolution of insurance telematics: from black boxes to smartphones
• Understanding risk and why accidents happen
• Driver scoring systems
• Building a telematics app
• Role of AI and automation
• Marketing strategies and user engagement
• Guest appearances from industry leaders

Stay tuned for in-depth discussions on how insurance telematics is transforming the industry.

Dolphin Technologies is pioneering smarter, safer, and more sustainable mobility through innovative telematics solutions. Follow our podcast for expert insights and future-forward thinking in the insurance world.

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Yasmin
So, welcome to the Insurance Telematics podcast. I’m super excited to be here today with Harald, the CEO and founder of Dolphin Technologies, who you’ll get to know more about throughout these episodes. And this is kind of the intro of the intro. So where we’ll introduce ourselves, or we’ll introduce the topics we’ll be talking about. I’m super excited to be here. I’m also a little bit nervous, and I’m sure Harald is nervous too. Are you nervous, Harald?

Harald
I’m absolutely nervous, but I’m more excited than nervous because I’m very happy that we finally make this happen.

Yasmin
Yeah, we’ve been talking about this for a while. Oh, and by the way, Harald is the CEO and founder of Dolphin Technologies. And we are currently in Vienna, in Austria, not Australia, Austria.

Harald
Yeah, no kangaroos.

Yasmin
Yeah, no kangaroos here. And we are super excited. Aren’t we?

Harald
Yes, definitely. And we hope we will make this as interesting as possible because insurance, when you hear the word insurance, many people fall asleep.

Yasmin
You think so? I mean, it does kind of sound like a boring thing, but I don’t think we’re going to make it a boring thing because we’re going to cover such a range of topics which are super futuristic and really interesting, going from behavioral economics to AI, to agentic systems and we’re really gonna introduce something that is new and actually super cool and people think is boring, which is insurance telematics. And wait, let’s go back to CEO and founder of Dolphin Technologies. I mentioned that. What even is Dolphin Technologies? Who are we? What is this company?

Harald
We’re a company located in Vienna, Austria, and we cover insurance telematics. And if you want to break it down in a nutshell what we do is we don’t want people to die on the road. And we also want them to move more ecologically. This is our mission actually. And there are many ways you can do this and our edge is that we want to inform people about why accidents happen in the first place. This is actually because people make wrong decisions and have missing information. Like wrong decisions is like you’re driving too fast, you’re using your smartphone when you’re driving. You’re distracted by other means. We will be covering in future podcasts many other things that you might not know are actually risky. And we give feedback to your current behavior. We give feedback to potential future risks. And we’ll even tell you when it’s better to stay at home because of icy roads or severe traffic conditions or other situations that make it safer to work from home or use public transport, for example.

Yasmin
And how does this really benefit insurers and insurance companies?

Harald
Well, from a monetary perspective, less claims, less expenditure. Insurance companies spend between, let’s say, 65 and 80% of their income of their premiums, they spend on claims. So this is the one thing. But, in reality, we give insurance companies the technology to select clients, make fair decisions. This sounds discriminating, but it’s actually the other way around because think of a young driver, they are discriminated in most countries by high insurance premiums, but actually 70 to 80% of young drivers are good drivers. Telematics gives them the opportunity to showcase to the insurance company that they’re actually good drivers. It creates customer touchpoints. So insurance companies can contextually communicate. They can use event-based interaction to talk with their clients. Which is extremely valuable because there are no touchpoints in insurance, right? You sign a contract, it goes through a drawer or a folder, you never touch it again. And only if something bad happens, you pull it out and call them. So, there is a lot of value for customers, a lot of value for insurance companies, and also for the environment because there is a high correlation between safe driving and ecological driving.

Yasmin
And we’ll touch this in a later episode. So we’re basically saving lives but also offering business benefits to insurers.

Harald
Absolutely. And this is the times we’re living in, right? You have to provide, let’s say, an economic benefit in order to change the world.

Yasmin
Yeah. So, I know you had a life-threatening accident and this is kind of what made you start Dolphin, isn’t it?

Harald
Yes, so it was one of the reasons that I thought about how we can help people in case of an accident. That happened to me many years ago. I was in my early 20s and I was driving by night and I was very tired and I fell asleep.

Yasmin
Wow.

Harald
Behind the wheel. And I was pretty fast, like I was on a highway. And I missed a left curve and I woke up in the middle of the curve going straight forward. I steered left, I steered right, so my car was slipping and I had a rollover accident and I rolled off the road. I was not badly injured, but I was unconscious. It was winter, it was cold. And it was only by coincidence that I was found by a truck driver. That was extreme luck. And if this wouldn’t have happened, I would probably not be sitting here with you.

Yasmin
I mean, you were extremely lucky. I know back then there weren’t really any smartphones. I’m not calling you old or anything, but I know that they didn’t exist. So, if this had happened to someone today and they didn’t have this technology that we were talking about, so insurance telematics, where you’re also able to prevent risk and help people stay safe on the road, this person, well, you in this case, could have ended up being dead.

Harald
Absolutely. If it’s cold outside, if you cannot move, if you’re stuck in the car, and nobody finds you, this is a life-threatening situation. I don’t want to make it overly dramatic, but I’m blessed and I’m happy and I’m very thankful that I’m here today.

Yasmin
I’m happy you’re here too. Thank you. And I’m sure our audience will be happy too. I mean, fingers crossed.

Harald
Yeah, fingers crossed.

Yasmin
So, I kind of want to learn more about what insurance telematics actually is. I know that we’re going to cover this in our next episode, so we’re not going to give you too many details yet, but just give us a glimpse, like give us a little teaser to make us actually interested in learning more about this podcast because at the end of the day, our podcast is literally called The Insurance Telematics Podcast. And why would someone really even be interested in this?

Harald
Well, insurance is everywhere, right? So everything we have and everything we cherish and everything we love is insured. Our lives are insured, our health is insured, our cars, our homes, our dogs, we insure everything we love. Insurance seems to be a boring industry, but it’s actually not because insurance is on the bleeding edge of technology because new technology means new risks, and new risks need to be insured. Insurance is on the edge of geopolitical events like elections or wars like we’re facing right now. Insurance is affected by climate change because of floods, wildfires, etc. So, insurance is an extremely interesting industry. Insurance for a long time has been focused on taking a premium from many to pay for the loss of a few. But insurance has become a little bit discriminating. And if you hear it whimpering down there, this is my dog, Tapo.

Yasmin
We’ll introduce him later.

Harald
We’ll show him probably. He’s thirsty. But we’ll make it short and feed him then and discuss next time. So, yeah, we will be talking about the technology behind it. We’ll be talking about how the technology evolved from black boxes in a car to actually using the user’s smartphone. We will be covering how AI impacts insurance telematics and how impactful communication can be. So, there will be a lot to cover. I don’t want to spoil, but there are some things we will be covering. We will break down in future episodes what insurance telematics is today, what it was in the past, and what it’s going to be. I wrote it down because it’s so many things. We’ll discuss what risk actually means. Why do accidents happen in the first place? We’ll explore driver scoring. What makes you a good driver, me a bad driver, or vice versa. We’ll build prototypes together. We’ll show people how to build their own telematics app, in their own look and feel. It’s really exciting. We’ll look at AI, AI agents, automations, marketing automations, explore user experience, user interaction, how to keep these apps and this technology interesting. And we’ll bring also industry leaders to discuss with us and to learn from them.

Yasmin
That’s going to be super exciting and cool. And I’m looking forward. Thank you and we’ll see you in the next episode.

Harald
Thank you. Bye bye.