Connected home insurance

Since March 8, 2015, every dwelling in France must have at least one standalone smoke alarm, under the law of March 9, 2010. The text filled ceilings with small units, then came the connected versions, which alert a phone when the occupant is away. Connected home insurance means using household sensors to prevent or limit a loss: linked smoke alarms, leak detectors placed under a water heater or washing machine, sometimes paired with a solenoid valve that shuts off the water supply as soon as a leak is detected. The main target is escape of water, the leading cause of home insurance claims in France by frequency, settled between insurers, up to 5,000 euros before tax, under the IRSI convention since June 1, 2018. A slow leak behind a partition, found on returning from holiday, often costs far more than the pipe that caused it, and the shut-off valve goes straight at that delay. French insurers use these devices mostly for prevention: a free or subsidized unit, an alert service included in a policy tier, sometimes a lower deductible for an equipped policyholder. Pricing on the sensor remains rare, for practitioner reasons. The equipped book is too young to measure a reliable frequency, and the insurer does not know whether the detector still works, dead battery or sensor unplugged since installation. False alarms wear the occupant down until the service gets switched off. Then there is the data: a water sensor that stays idle for three weeks says the home is empty, and that kind of information about the occupants' lives falls squarely under the GDPR.