Octo Telematics, one of the world’s fastest growing digital tracking organisations, has announced that it’s extended its partnership with insurance firm, insurethebox, which will continue to see the telematics firm provide it with its “black box,” solutions for insurance premiums for another two years.
This comes off the back of insurethebox’s telematics enabled packages seeing continued interest, especially from young drivers. This is despite the fact that privacy advocates have been quite vocal about their distrust of the technology. In fact, since the partnership began between the two firms back in 2010, over 300,000 vehicles have been fitted with Octo Telematics hardware. They offer traditional functionality, including providing a GPS location of the vehicle and certain driver metrics like acceleration, braking and speed.
Martin Williams, UK managing director, Octo, said: “The extension of the agreement between Octo and insurethebox is a further endorsement of the popularity of UBI (user based insurance) amongst drivers. Octo are delighted to continue working with insurethebox to provide the technology and data that supports the growth of the insurethebox business and delivers significant savings for their customers.”
Insurethebox also complimented Octo on not only the installation of the telematics hardware, but the way in which it handles the data sent to it, before being forwarded on to insurethebox. Octo has also proved to be the most cost effective solution for the company, in helping to deliver discounts to customers as well as continuing to make solid profits for its shareholders.
Mark Grant, business development manager at insurethebox, said: “Over the past four years, Octo have been a trusted partner for insurethebox. The Octo technology and quality of data has played a significant role in helping our business develop to become the UK’s leading provider of telematics car insurance”.
Octo Telematics has also been garneering a lot of praise in the industry at the Insurance Telematics USA 2014 conference which is taking place right now at the Radisson Acqua Blu Hotel in Chicago, USA. Bringing together the different heads of telematics industry, the conference is set to discuss key points about it such as data and pricing, disruptive new technologies, the next wave of telematics hardware offerings and how businesses can further diversify their portfolios with them.
Octo is of course taking part in the event, with several of the key speakers coming from its ranks. Jonathan Hewett, current CEO at Octo will be taking centre stage today, delivering a keynote address on how to redefine brand positioning and connect insurers with their customers, while on the second day, Nino Tarantino, CEO of Octo North America, will be discussing the nuances of certain telematics business models. The final speaker, John Kramer, director of business development at Octo North America, will be talking about consumer engagement shortly after.
As a Platinum sponsor of the event, it’s no surprise that Octo has a big stake in it. It’s in good company too, as there will also be speakers from car manufacturers like Ford, as well as other telematics firms and insurers, all of whom understandably have a big part to play in the industry and where it’s headed over the next few years.
