Assignment 29A: Venture Concept No.2

Opportunity

Any driver who have insurance policies have the potential to become affected by rate increases. In addition, since there are more drivers on the road now, there is also a higher chance driver and all people will get into an accident. Ultimately, this product affects every single individual who enter a car, because they run into a risk of collision. However, drivers who own insurance and who are actively paying their premiums run into this issue the most. All in all, this product will benefit anyone who enters a vehicle. People need to realize that their driving habits will obviously increase insurance rates for an area.... since it is “riskier” to insurance, because insurance companies are also a business, they don't want to constantly lose money, otherwise they would be bankrupt. 

Innovation

This company will focus on insurance education. There are two ways to receive this product. One, it will be available online, and will be mandatory for new drivers who are obtaining their license to take prior to becoming licensed. Also, drivers who are convicted of a DUI will be forced to retake this course as a refresher.

The next way to receive this product and service would be through schools. All schools would be required for high school seniors to be involved in a half day “boot camp”, where our teachers and insurance professionals would go teach them about insurance. Students are required to go online that same day and pass the exam with 80% or higher on one attempt. Students who have already taken this course when they get their license will still have to attend the boot camp and pass this exam, which will be a beneficial for them regardless because it would be a “refresher”. This information will be sent over to the state’s DMV.  

Students that are over 18 years old that do not have their license can “test out” of the exam and not have to go through the class when trying to obtain a license if they have attended and passed the boot camp in their school.

Venture Concept

Educating people on how their driving habits affect insurance rates and how insurance companies responds to claims ultimately results in people wanting to become better drivers. People are unaware that their driving habits, or their claims are affecting the area’s statistics (risk increase). Although there are thousands of people in one city that are accident free and violation free, this does not mean that they are safe from rate increase. This fact is a myth, that the better the driver, and the older the driver, the lower the rates. There are still thousands of other people who are driving insanely. Insurance companies rate areas based on risk factors, and the riskier the area, the higher the rates. Also, inflation comes into play as well, but this cannot be changed.

Consumers may not be satisfying this need but believe that educating young drivers and drivers who have been convicted of DUI should be taught. This would eventually lead to better drivers since everyone will eventually have this knowledge in the future as generations obtain licenses. This product will become mandatory, therefore, will become a necessity for all potential drivers who will be getting their license.

Since this product will be mandatory, consumers won’t be able to switch products and will have to take the course. In addition, there won’t be any competitors since it will become a federal required step in order to obtain your license.

Although we are providing this course for new drivers and drivers who are convicted of DUI, the material would be different as new drivers would be taught different materials. For drivers that are convicted with a DUI, their course would be a “refresher”, but for new drivers, it would focus more on educating and teaching new information. Foreigners with current drivers license who wants a US license would have to take the new driver course.

Three Elements

Having resources such as networking with people in the industry, having a product that will make a difference, and having an educational product itself is very important for success. There are competitors out there who have these courses as regular “classes” that students would have to pay for just to learn. Their objective is not really to make a difference on road safety, or help people minimize rate increases by minimizing claims. The vision of my product are three of those elements, which consumers will end up realizing that having this knowledge is important, therefore, my product will become a necessity rather than just a “choice”.

With my innovation, I would want to tackle and create a course that will teach drivers about insurance in general. You would be surprised that most people do not know what coverages they have on their policies and what kind of liability limits mean. I would want to start a program for new drivers to learn that to be able to become educated and hopefully choose insurance coverages wisely, as well as decrease the rates of uninsured drivers.  

Feedback

Based on feedback from my peers, from my previous venture concept, Julia recommended to me that instead of focusing on all drivers, I should focus on a certain group of drivers. Which gave me an idea that I should focus on just new drivers and ones that are convicted of DUI. Most importantly, I realized that since they have completely different experiences with driving, I am going to make the two course materials different. I decided to keep those two groups because DUI drivers may not be new drivers, and they may never have learned the material, therefore, it is necessary to teach them that information to promote roadside safety. David mentioned about foreigners who come to the US, they would have to take a “new driver” course since they are new to the insurance industry in the United States, I really appreciated him mentioning that because I never thought about that!