In Southern California, near TFS US headquarters, TIMS will support the development of telematics car insurance services for Toyota customers, as well as new experiences aimed at more fully satisfying customers by working in unison with dealers and distributors.

TIMS will contribute to the development of insurance offerings that benefit consumers including so-called “pay how you drive” insurance, which encourages safer driving. TIMS plans to conduct analysis of big data, and conduct relevant marketing and promotion of the new services to help offer broader insurance options to users.

AD and TFS will invest in the new company through their own subsidiaries in the US, while investment on the part of TMC will come from Toyota Connected, Inc. (TC) established in the US in January 2016. The new company intends to leverage TC’s telematics data access, TFS’s financial services, and AD’s telematics car insurance expertise to offer services designed to provide higher customer satisfaction.

TFS and AD have been jointly promoting such unified financial and insurance services around the world since the 1990s. By consolidating their experience and knowhow, the two companies now plan to start new services in the US.

TC was established within the framework of a global reorganization of TMC’s corporate structure into product-based in-house companies, and aims to contribute to TMC’s global development in the connectivity and data science fields. Along with the increase in connected vehicles, there is a need for a more-seamless relationship among driving data, financing options and insurance. The joint establishment of TIMS by these companies is an undertaking designed to address that need.

Positioning the provision of its services in the US as a launch pad, TIMS has in view a wider rollout through coordination with TMC’s global operations. TIMS plans to make use of accumulated driving data obtained with appropriate consumer consent, and also plans to engage with the Toyota Research Institute, Inc., which TMC established as a research base for the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics.