Tech Innovator Gears Auto Insurance Space For Greater Inclusivity

Just Insure is making a name for itself in the auto insurance space with a high-tech approach underpinned by its founder’s vision for fairer and affordable rates for low-income drivers.

If you talk to drivers, you’ll hear a common refrain: no matter how safely they drive, their auto insurance bill keeps getting bigger and bigger.  Robert Smithson is on a mission to change all that.

Smithson could hardly have envisioned that pursuing philosophy at Cambridge University would put him at the forefront of shifting the mindset in the U.S. auto insurance space.

As founder and CEO of Just Insure, he is driving change by combining telematics and AI to craft premiums based on drivers’ behavior rather than their zip code or credit score. Underpinning this is Smithson’s desire to improve people’s lives, whether by helping them assert control over their finances or by rewarding better driving behavior with cheaper insurance.

Addressing Insurance Inequalities

Smithson said, “Traditionally, auto insurance is costly for lower-income Americans. They live in zip codes that have higher auto insurance premiums and are more likely to have lower credit scores. So, auto insurance isn’t just more expensive relative to income than for the more affluent, but it can be more expensive in absolute terms.

“It’s hard to break out of poverty and poor credit when your insurance takes up such a  large chunk of your income.” And this means that too many Americans drive without insurance: typically about 14% compared to less than 1% in Europe or Canada.

He added: “When we started Just Insure, we saw this as an opportunity. How can we create an auto insurance product that works for the lowest-income Americans? How can we use real behavior to encourage safe driving, increase the number of people with insurance on the roads, and reduce the number of accidents?”

“Insurance is the most data-driven profession of all, but the industry was slow to recognize change. It relies on slow-changing demographic factors such as age, zip code, and marital status. This missed an extraordinary amount of data being collected in real time about drivers, how we could measure actual driving and behavior.”

He added: “The use of telematics changes all that. If you exhibit safer behavior or you don’t drive so much, then you can personally benefit. We have customers who pay 80% less than with traditional insurers.

“Credit score and zip codes are not bad ways to measure risk in general, but within that group, some individuals are going to be safe, while others are risky. A good driver in a low-income area might pay double what a worse driver pays in a wealthy zip code, simply because of statistical correlations. That’s not fair, and technology now allows us to do better.

“Telematics makes insurance more equitable by turning it into something people can control. You can’t change your credit score, education, or zip code overnight, but you can change your driving habits.

“That gives customers agency; they’re not just passive buyers, they’re participants in how their risk is priced. We also reward improvement: as your driving behavior improves, your premiums drop. That positive feedback loop encourages safer roads overall.”

Ripe For Change

With a career that has encompassed Goldman Sachs, Arete Research, and THS Partners, his entrepreneurial spirit burned bright as he sought to gain an ‘informational edge’ – finding data signals that others overlooked.

Understanding information’s predictive powers led to his first major venture, Genius Sports. “What connects everything I’ve done is data: using information to make better, fairer decisions. At Genius Sports, we used data to understand and predict sports performance. At Just Insure, we use data to understand and price driving behavior.”

It was to the insurance market that he cast his eye after selling Genius Sports for $280 million. Not only did he find it ripe for transformation, but also for using data in ways that could have a real impact on people’s lives, finances, and the roads.

He explained: “All the time I am thinking, ‘What can we do with data?’ Ultimately, it’s 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.

“Insurance is a fascinating place for this. As with sports betting and finance, players fall into two categories: those who have an incredible intuitive judgement for the right price for a given risk, and those, like me, who are creatures of numbers, systems, and building the right model.

“Insurance is one of the biggest markets in the world and arguably one of the least efficient. Insurance is the most data-driven profession of all. However, I think the industry was slow to recognize that change was coming. 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.

“Insurance is rooted in historic and slowly changing demographic factors, such as age, zip code, sex, marital status, and the like. But this missed the extraordinary amount of real-time data now being collected about drivers, and how we can now measure actual driving and behaviour rather than just proxies.

“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. That’s when I knew there was an opportunity to make insurance fairer and smarter. That’s how Just Insure was born: a technology company first, an insurer second.”

He added: “Sports analytics taught me that data without context is dangerous and it’s true with driving data. 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 at Just Insure with that in mind, not just measuring acceleration and braking, but interpreting *why* they happen.”

Smarter, faster, fairer

That data-first approach comes straight from his philosophical training. “Philosophy teaches you to question assumptions and build arguments from first principles,” he said. “In business, that’s incredibly useful as it forces you to strip problems down to their core logic before deciding what to do next.”

Where traditional insurers rely on demographic averages to price risk, Smithson’s model is the opposite: a real-time, behavior-based system powered by telematics and artificial intelligence.

“Telematics measures how, when, and where people drive. We collect that data from smartphones and vehicles and feed it into our AI models. Safer drivers pay less because we can understand how safely they actually drive.”

Where legacy insurers price backwards, Just Insure looks forward, constantly adjusting premiums based on live driving behavior. The company built its own policy management and pricing systems from scratch, allowing for a level of adaptability that traditional players can’t match.

“Our loss ratios are more than 20 points better than the industry average,” says Smithson. “And that’s because we can price risk dynamically.”

That adaptability isn’t just a technical advantage but also a philosophical one, reflecting Smithson’s belief in 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,” he says.

AI is central to the process. It 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.

The feedback loop is constant: behavior influences pricing, and pricing influences behavior. “This makes insurance not only fairer but also a tool for promoting safer roads. If you want people to trust you with their data, you have to earn that trust every day,” he says.

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. That’s a radical shift in incentive design.

Smithson adds. “That gives customers agency; they’re not just passive buyers, they’re participants in how their risk is priced. Over time, this makes the system more transparent and merit-based.”

Staying Grounded 

While Just Insure has caught the attention inside and outside the industry, Smithson remains humble in his outlook, although inevitably contemplation of scale and business growth is never far away. “Finance taught me discipline. You learn how to evaluate risk, manage capital efficiently, and make decisions under uncertainty,” he said. “That experience has been invaluable.

“The key is adaptability: knowing when to step back, when to push, and when to listen. I stay grounded in data while encouraging creativity from the team. I also believe in hiring great people and giving them autonomy; otherwise, micromanagement kills creativity.”

Recent growth has been bolstered by the arrival of Gary Tolman as Chairman, a seasoned executive who helped scale digital insurers Esurance and Noblr. “Gary and I quickly realized we shared the same philosophy that data-driven insurance can genuinely improve people’s lives,” says Smithson. Their partnership blends “old-school discipline with new-school innovation,” balancing Smithson’s startup speed with Tolman’s industry rigor.

Under this leadership, Just Insure aims to become America’s most profitable auto insurer by pricing risk more accurately than competitors. Smithson’s roadmap includes expanding into new U.S. states, scaling the Just Unlimited product, and achieving sustained profitability by early 2026.

That confidence stems from Just Insure’s superior loss ratios, efficient capital use, and high customer satisfaction. Its technology also allows the company to quickly identify and churn unprofitable customers while retaining high-margin ones.

Smithson said: “By pricing risk more accurately than anyone else, we can offer lower premiums to good drivers and still make more per policy. In a $300 billion market, accuracy beats size.

“The biggest lesson is that risk and opportunity are two sides of the same coin. The key isn’t to avoid risk, it’s to understand it better than everyone else. If you know what you’re taking on and can measure it properly, risk becomes a competitive advantage.”