Kia's new app turns your phone into a car insurance black box

Kia's new app essentially turns your phone into a ‘black box’, providing feedback about your driving and passing on details to car insurance providers, potentially saving you money.

Partnering with data analytics firm LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Kia has developed a special ‘Driving Insights’ feature, which acts a bit like a backseat driver, rating several elements such as your speed, braking and distance travelled to provide an overall safety score.

Once rated, users can choose to send this data to insurers and, much like with a traditional black box policy, receive a personalised insurance quote, which can fluctuate depending on how they drive.

The Head of connected cars at Kia, Olivier Pascal, says the new feature is “empowering our customers with real-time driving insights while supporting the insurance industry with meaningful, privacy-conscious data, enabling insurance providers to deliver tailored solutions like never before.”

This comes at a time where car insurance premiums sit at an average of £757, according to price comparison site, Confused.com. This is the lowest they’ve been in the past two years, but usage-based insurance policies have the potential to bring down costs even further – or make things more expensive, depending on how you drive.

Kia’s new app isn’t just a way to rate your driving; the Korean firm’s new companion app has also combined several features that were previously only available via separate applications, such as accessing warranty information, locking and unlocking the car, and accessing chargepoints via the Kia Charge service.

If you download the new app, Kia says existing accounts will be automatically transferred over, meaning you’ll only need to sign in once to access all of the features it has to offer. The new Kia App is available to download now on both iOS and Android Devices via the App Store and Google Play Stores respectively.

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