JERSEY CITY, N.J. and COLUMBUS, Ohio — Buckle, a tech-enabled financial services company, announced that crash risk solutions from TNEDICCA®, a leader in location-based traffic crash intelligence and predictive analytics, is enabling the company to provide better, fairly priced comprehensive auto insurance to Transportation Network Company (TNC) drivers. TNEDICCA has built a proprietary traffic crash location database gathering police report data from 40 states. Buckle is reinventing the insurance model for the gig economy using non-traditional data sources, not credit scores geared for salaried employees, to underwrite better, fair insurance policies.

Buckle’s mission is to champion TNC drivers by assessing risk in better ways, which allows us to provide comprehensive auto insurance, whether drivers are on or off the clock, at fair prices.

“Insurance companies underwrite policies for gig drivers based on traditional credit scoring, leaving them with only high premiums,” said Sharon Fernandez, head of Buckle’s Insurance Division. “Buckle’s mission is to champion TNC drivers by assessing risk in better ways, which allows us to provide comprehensive auto insurance, whether drivers are on or off the clock, at fair prices. Adding TNEDICCA’s crash risk locations data to our current risk assessment model is helping us to deliver on our mission of providing complete coverage at better rates.”

Buckle is utilizing TNEDICCA’s Location-Based Crash Risk Score solution, which calculates risk based on actual accident hotspots around a specific location. TNEDICCA provides the most precise location risk solutions which are built based on more than 30 million crashes generating average loss ratio lift of 38 percent. Its Usage-Based Risk Score solution is also helping Buckle account for telematics data beyond driving behaviors by assessing crash risk of actual route coordinates by date and time of trips.  

“We are excited to collaborate with Buckle to bring fair and accurate insurance pricing to the rideshare economy,” said Yiem Sunbhanich, co-founder and CEO of TNEDICCA. “Working with Buckle dovetails well with our ultimate mission of reducing traffic accidents through a better use of data and analytics with a focus on bringing fairness and safety to this market.”

More than one third of all U.S. workers, approximately 57 million people, are employed as independent workers. If the gig economy grows at its current rate, more than 50% of the U.S. workforce will participate in gig work by 2027.

Buckle expects to expand its relationship with TNEDICCA to utilize its risk avoidance, enhanced safety, and improved driver engagement capabilities.