Just Insure is harnessing telematics and AI to revolutionize U.S. auto insurance, delivering more personalized, affordable coverage for today’s drivers.
Robert Smithson loves philosophy and numbers. Combine the two, and his business, Just Insure, is poised to become America’s most profitable auto insurer. Not the largest, but the smartest.
Just Insure is ripping up the insurance playbook by using artificial intelligence and telematics to make car insurance more affordable, particularly to low-income drivers who have long been disadvantaged by traditional pricing models.
Too many Americans, says Smithson, drive uninsured, open themselves up to severe consequences if they find themselves in an accident. In Europe less than 1% of drivers lack insurance, but it’s around 14% in the US. The root of Just’s business is interpreting data so insurance is personalized to the driver, making it more affordable and accessible.
He explained: “Insurance is the most data-driven profession, but the industry is slow to change. It relies too much on demographic factors such as age, zip code, and marital status. It neglects key data collected in real time about a person’s actual driving skills.”
Technology First, insurance Second
Just Insure tackles this head-on by basing premiums on real driving behavior rather than a person’s credit score or zip code. It offers tangible savings to safe, low-mileage drivers, sometimes up to 80% less than traditional insurers.
This proactively defines Smithson’s ethos that Just Insure is a technology company first, and an insurer second. He drew on his experience from his previous venture, Genius Sports, which analyzed data to predict sporting performances, and applied the approach to insurance.
He said, “Sports analytics taught me that data without context is dangerous. A sharp brake might look risky, but if it’s to avoid an accident, it’s evidence of good driving. We built our telematics models not on measuring acceleration and braking, but interpreting why they happen.”
Telematics enables Just Insure to measure driving behavior in real time. Using data from smartphones and vehicles, the company’s AI models analyze when, where, and how people drive.
AI interprets telematics data in context, distinguishing risky driving from safe, defensive maneuvers. It can also predict the likelihood of a claim with precision beyond traditional actuarial methods.
By building its own policy management system and pricing model from scratch, Just Insure has achieved loss ratios more than 20 points better than the industry average. The system continuously refines its understanding of risk by analyzing billions of data points from time of day and road conditions to driving maneuvers and traffic density.
Data’s Leap Drives Responsible Actions
Underpinning the technology is a cause-and-effect: Smithson’s desire to tackle the inequities of traditional auto insurance pricing, help Americans take back control of their finances, and empower them on the road.
He explained: “Lower-income Americans often live in zip codes with higher premiums and have lower credit scores. That means they pay sometimes two or three times more, even when they drive just as safely.
“A good driver in a low-income area shouldn’t pay double what a worse driver pays in a wealthier one.” In the U.S., auto insurance can consume a far larger share of income for poorer households, an aggravating factor as to why so many drivers are uninsured.
Smithson said: “Our technology allows our premiums to be personalized based on real driving behavior, not on their credit score, zip code, their education, or how much they earn.”
Once a customer has logged 3,000 miles of verified driving data, Just Insure even “fades” the impact of credit score to zero, effectively eliminating one of the biggest sources of pricing bias. Smithson commented: “Credit score and zip code are not bad measures of risk in general, but they create systematic unfairness. We’re able to identify and price risk as it changes, so safer drivers pay less.
“Yes, telematics makes insurance more equitable by turning it into something people can control, but it can also be a tool to promote safer roads. You can’t change your credit score or where you live overnight, but you can change your driving habits.
“Ultimately, AI makes our insurance fairer, faster, and more efficient, while giving drivers immediate feedback on how to save.”
Smithson assured that data privacy is fundamental to the company’s operations. “We’re transparent with customers about what data we collect and how it’s used, and we never sell or share it without consent. We anonymize and encrypt driving data so it can’t be traced back to individuals. If you want people to trust you with their data, you have to earn that trust every day.”
Route To Just Insure
Smithson’s road to insurance innovation has been a journey that has included studying philosophy at Cambridge, an early career in finance at Goldman Sachs, Arete Research, and THS Partners, before creating Genius Sports, which he sold for $280m in 2018.
He related that philosophy enabled him to think analytically and in the abstract by questioning and challenging assumptions and by stripping arguments down to their core logic.
Later, Smithson sought what he calls an “informational edge” by finding data signals that others overlooked. This fascination with information’s predictive powers led to Genius Sports. “What connects everything I’ve done is data: using information to make better, fairer decisions.
“Ultimately, what we can do with data is about replacing subjective judgment with objective evidence. I’ve always been drawn to businesses where you can take a messy human action, apply data science, and make it more transparent and efficient.”
Which is when Smithson turned his attentions to insurance, an industry he saw ripe for transformation. Like finance and sports betting, insurance revolves around risk assessment, yet it remains stuck in an outdated model.
He said: “When I realized how broken the incentives were, how much of an opportunity there is to move the needle, and how big the potential market is, I couldn’t resist. It’s an industry that directly affects people’s financial lives.
“If you can use technology to make it cheaper and fairer, you’re not just building a business, you’re giving people the right incentives to make smarter, safer driving decisions.”
Smithson leveraged the aggressiveness of U.S. startup culture with the U.K.’s more thoughtful approach. “I like combining the two: the boldness of American entrepreneurship with the analytical rigor of the British approach.”
The company’s structure reflects that ethos. Its modular technology allows small, agile teams to make rapid decisions measured in hours, not weeks. “As we scale, we’ll need more systems.”
Smithson concedes. “But we must never lose the speed that makes us effective. We’re not chasing vanity metrics but focus on the fundamentals such as low loss ratios, efficient capital use, and customer satisfaction.”
“Finance taught me to evaluate risk and make decisions under uncertainty. That experience has been invaluable as an entrepreneur. For me, entrepreneurship is really about understanding probability.”
Just Insure is now poised for even greater growth thanks to Gary Tolman, the company’s Chairman. A veteran of Esurance and Noblr, Tolman brings deep operational and regulatory experience while balancing Smithson’s startup speed.
Under this leadership, Just Insure aims to become America’s most profitable auto insurer in a $300 billion market. By pricing risk more accurately than competitors, the company can offer lower premiums to good drivers while maintaining strong profitability, Smithson added.
The company’s vision is to expand into new U.S. states, scale the Just Unlimited product, and achieve sustained profitability by early 2026. “If we can utilize data to make insurance both smarter and fairer, that’s not just good business, it’s progress,” he added.
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