Octo Telematics: Melding analytics, machine learning and IoT to make roads safer

We help insurance companies move from static data to dynamic data Fabio Sbianchi, Octo Telematics

Calculating insurance premiums is a challenging task for insurers, as they often have limited information upon which to base risk assessments.

The period a driver has held a license and their type of car have never been reliable indicators of safety; and reports insurers receive about accidents are subjective and may be written sometime after the event.

With telematics, insurers can understand in real-time where the driver is, and help the driver improve his or her behaviour, says Fabio Sbianchi, CEO and founder at Octo Telematics.

Octo is a major provider of telematics and data analytics solutions for the auto insurance industry, and a pioneer of the insurance telematics industry.

“We help insurance companies move from static data to dynamic data,” says Sbianchi, who spoke at theAnalytics Experience conference in Milan, a business technology conference organised by SAS.

Today, Octo Telematics is using analytics to analyse real-time data from Internet of Things (IoT) technology. This helps provide automotive insurers with a clearer picture of driver behaviour and encourage safer driving.

It means the company can help insurers and drivers understand how safely someone is driving, using indicators such as speed, heavy breaking and rapid acceleration. This technology will add additional insight to traffic situations as autonomous vehicles become a factor on the roads.

“With autonomous vehicles set to appear on our roads in the next few years, it’s vital that we can use these capabilities to identify error and correctly apportion any responsibility,” says Sbianchi.

He says when they started with telematics, they used the data for simple reporting, like how many kilometres were driven and the location of the driver. In 2010, they implemented qualitative telematics with behavioural components.

“This is leading to a data-driven transformation of the insurance industry.”

By monitoring drivers’ real-life performance and analysing that data with SAS, he says Octo can give insurers unprecedented insight into how their customers actually drive day to day.

This new data empowers insurers to make fairer pricing decisions and encourages safer driving by offering better deals to the safest drivers.

“This means we are able to analyse huge data volumes and generate actionable insight at speed for insurers and customers, ensuring a fairer deal for all, which also rewards good driving,” says Sbianchi.

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Surprising insights

Octo uses the insights from SAS Visual Analytics to provide insurers with an individually calculated risk score for every driver, with some surprising results.

For example, it is widely accepted that younger drivers lack experience and cause more car accidents, but their data shows that 26 per cent of young drivers have a low risk score.

“Octo’s work is a great example of how applied analytics combined with IoT can make life better and safer for everyone,” says Jason Mann, vice president of IoT at SAS.

Divina Paredes is attending theAnalytics Experienceconference in Milan as a guest of SAS

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