Octo Telematics, known for its telematics products for the automotive insurance industry, has developed an Internet of Things insurance platform.
Dubbed the Next Generation Platform (NGP) the $40 million investment aims to provide open access and integration of an Application Platform Interface (API), as well as a modular insurance telematics structure for the company’s insurance partners.
Octo claims that by developing the platform as part of an IoT ecosystem, it provides its partners with the “scope and ability to meet the rapidly growing global demand for User-Based Insurance (UBI), that is predicted to reach 93m global policies by 2020”.
“This is an important business investment, continuing the company’s 15-year history as one of the pioneers in the global telematics industry,” said Octo Telematics’ CEO, Fabio Sbianchi. “The Next Generation Platform will help us meet the growing demand from our current insurance partners, as well as making new customer acquisition faster, more efficient and open up opportunities for any system integration partners, from budding start-ups to the largest multi-national insurers.”
The transformation of insurance
The platform was developed with support from technology vendors Salesforce, Software AG, SAS and SAP, as well as the consulting firms Deloitte and Capgemini, to “boost the potential of IoT and digital insurance disruption”.
Its advantage over traditional telematics systems is apparently its ability to take data from any sensor through its IoT hub, analyze it to deliver multidimensional analytics, and provide real-time data services to support a full digital transformation of the policyholder experience.
In addition to core telematics services, such as driver behavior scoring, and crash and claims analysis, these new capabilities supposedly provide better risk analytics for Octo’s insurance, original equipment manufacturers, and long-term rental and fleet partners.
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Octo looks beyond automotive
Octo says that its product is already fully live and operational, and will be particularly effective as the automotive sector develops and connected cars become more of a mainstream reality.
“The technology is and will continue to be instrumental in providing the crash analysis needed to determine liability and better assess driver premiums, and help reduce insurance fraud and streamline the claims process substantially,” Octo said.
However, the company also anticipates that the platform will allow for greater integration of data coming directly from connected cars and enable a growing number of other third-party services such as tolling and traffic information.
Ultimately, the NGP aims to give companies of all scale the platform “to build a complete new customer experience for policyholders”, which Octo suggests could transfer to other insurance verticals besides auto – like home, pet, health and on-demand insurance.
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