Rega Crowdsurance is trying to mislead you. Their website state:
We all heard about shared economy: people sharing cars, home, bikes, even wi-fi. But why cant we share our risks and protect each other without insurance companies. We have to pay lots of money because only insurance companies have algorithms for risk assessment, technology and resources.
Currently, few cars and homes are shared. Cars and bikes are parked and unused 90% of the time. Therefore, there is an opportunity to increase utilization by sharing them. This is not applicable to insurance. Risks are already shared with insurance companies. There is no such thing as a risk sitting on your driveway, waiting to be used. When you buy insurance from anyone, you are automatically sharing the risk.
The way to reduce the money you pay, is to increase competition. There are already tens of thousands of insurance companies and there are bankruptcies (insolvencies) every year. Google it. They go bankrupt because they are NOT charging the customers enough to cover the risks that the insurer is taking on. This implies that customers can be paying too little already.
A crypto currency speeds up and lowers cost for bank wire transfers. A crypto currency eliminates the high cost and multi-day withdrawal from gambling sites. The key to success in insurance is not related to the currency. A new currency does NOTHING for the insured nor does it improve an insurers operating costs or COMBINED RATIO, which is one factor to profitability.
Their white paper states:
Thats why leveraging our 20 years experience in risk assessment and scoring we are creating REGA Risk Sharing platform - the new standard for insurance market with state-of-art technology that will be available for everyone as a new segment of the shared economy.
Does Rega Crowdsurance think that their 20 years experience in risk assessment is superior to Berkshire Hathaways 60 years experience in risk assessment? Even though AIG has 100 years of experience in risk assessment, they almost went bankrupt.
What makes Rega Crowdsurance think they know more than anyone else in how much to charge you to insure your car against the next accident?
Even if Rega Crowdsurance thinks they know risk assessment, there is another major factor to profitability: KNOWING HOW TO INVEST. Lets say you are an insurer and you collect $100 million of premiums, which is called the PREMIUM POOL. You wont have any claims until the next hurricane. What you do with the premium pool is critical. You cannot let it sit there to collect dust. You have to invest it. Where and how are you going to invest it? Quite often, insurance companies lose money from underwriting (risk assessment) and make up the loss from their investments. The majority of profits for Berkshire Hathaway comes from how the premium pool is invested. What makes you think Rega Crowdsurance knows how to invest?
Their white paper states:
Compared to traditional insurance, in crowdsurance there are no insurers, intermediaries and brokers, all the processes being controlled and managed by programs and algorithms.
Yes, there are insurers: other users. GEICO has had no intermediaries nor brokers for 70 years. Other insurance companies exist without brokers.
If you are a Rega Crowdsurance user, you will be an insurer or insured. If you are an insurer, are you going to go through the hassle of complying with the multitude of state government regulations on insurers?
If you are an insured, is the state government going to make sure that Rega Crowdsurance is properly capitalized so that they will have enough to fully reimburse you and all of the insured when your cars are destroyed?
Their white paper addresses regulations by stating this:
We ensure regulators to comply with all necessary procedures including identification of platform members, working according to current jurisdiction legislation. Internal policies are designated to prevent and mitigate possible risks of the platform being involved in any kind of illegal activity. REGA Risk Sharing adopts risk-based approach to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The principle is that resources should be directed in accordance with priorities so that the greatest risks receive the highest attention. Upon request of regulating authorities we disclose all information concerning the case, if that information can not be found in public blockchain.
Most of this is verbose. The rest is misleading. Regulations of insurance is not related to illegal activities or money laundering. They are there to make sure that the insurer has enough money to pay all of the claims.
Rega Crowdsurance is extremely is extremely high risk, unless it is being started by former executives of GEICO, State Farm, etc.
Also, they are in a country without extradition agreements. If they screw you over, they are immune from punishment from your government. This makes them more invulnerable and likely to make any claim they want.
I would like to argue with you on that.
1) The sharing economy is a definite trend. Many scientific researches admit that. Car sharing is having a boom currently. AirBnB grows very fast.
2) Sharing economy is a definitely applicable for insurance industry, as Vitalik Buterin mentioned "Decentralized insurance is big if it can succeed"
3) Many insurance people such as Head of the biggest Insurance company in Russia - Sberbank Insurance, Hannes Chopra, Jake Diner professional from insurtech space and Vince Chan from Creta Ventures supported the concept. Team members that doing the project are having MBA from the University of Chicago the famous business school.
4) Many people from Blockchain community are from the same country. Vitalik was born here too.
5) On REGA insured are those who need the coverage for risk, not those who buy policies just to obey the rules. It is a service not an obligation
6) The assets invested by Insurance companies are the source of profit for Insurance company, not for the insured. Those funds have to belong to the community not to corporate structures gaining profit out of those. REGA's concept is not to hold too much funds on the balance sheet to gain profit from those, but actually provide service for insured and repay risk premiums back, if nothing happened with the community members.
7) Crowdsurance platform on Blockchain is more efficient than any insurance company drawning in regulation and corruption.
Thx for your feedback anyway.