Background: Zurich is the global insurance company that's been operating in Australia since 1920, insuring 2.3 million people across Australia and New Zealand. It's also been a long-standing insurer of Tesla.

What happened: Now, Zurich is offering Tesla drivers a discount on their car insurance if they hand the wheel over to Tesla's self-driving technology. Around 50% of Tesla owners currently opt into the technology, which lets the cars navigate set routes while a driver supervises.

What else: Zurich is the first insurer in Australia, and only the second in the world, to use self-driving technology as a risk-rating factor. In other words, your car's ability to drive itself could soon affect what you pay to insure it, setting a new precedent for risk-based pricing in Australia.

What's the key learning?

💡 Risk-based pricing is when insurance companies set a premium based on how likely you are to need the insurance. For example, if you've been in several car accidents recently, your insurer might see you as more likely to make another claim... so they charge a higher premium.

💡 Get this: Tesla says cars using the technology had one-seventh as many collisions. But the technology has also been linked to several crashes in the US. And local researchers warn it could make drivers less road-competent.

💡 If self-driving tech genuinely reduces crashes, it could justify lower premiums. But if it changes driver behaviour or introduces new risks, insurers could end up pricing for something that hasn't been fully understood yet. So this could be a crash course in successful (or unsuccessful) risk-based pricing.