Toyota Motor Corp., Toyota Financial Services, and a Japanese insurer have formed a telematics car insurance services company that will offer "pay how you drive" insurance to encourage safer driving.

The joint venture known as Toyota Insurance Management Solutions USA, LLC (TIMS) was formed April 1, Toyota has announced. Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Co., Ltd. has invested in the business.

The new venture will be located in Southern California near TFS U.S. headquarters and 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 conduct analysis of big data, and relevant marketing and promotion of the new services to help offer broader insurance options to users, according to Toyota.

Aioi Nissay Dowa and TFS will invest in the new company through their own subsidiaries in the U.S., while investment from Toyota Motor will come from Toyota Connected, Inc., which was established in the U.S. in January. The new company intends to leverage telematics data access, financial services, and telematics car insurance expertise to offer services designed to provide higher customer satisfaction.

TFS and Aioi Nissay Dowa 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 U.S.

Toyota Connected  was established to contribute to Toyota Motor's global development in the connectivity and data science fields. TIMS was formed to enable a more-seamless relationship among driving data, financing options and insurance.

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 Toyota Motor established as a research base for the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics.

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