Octo completes acquisition of Willis Towers Watson’s UBI assets

Octo Telematics, a global provider of telematics for the auto insurance industry, has completed its acquisition of the usage-based insurance (UBI) assets of Willis Towers Watson.

Octo’s acquisition includes Willis Towers Watson’s DriveAbility solution and the DriveAbility Marketplace. Geoff Werner will join Octo as global telematics leader, reporting directly to Fabio Sbianchi, CEO of Octo.

DriveAbility aggregates and analyses granular telematics and insurance data to provide a driving score and to assist insurers to design, score, issue and bind telematics-based insurance policies. The solution will fit into Octo’s insurtech ecosystem, the Next Generation Platform (NGP).

NGP was developed with support from Salesforce, Software AG, SAS and SAP, as well as consulting firms Deloitte and Capgemini. It is fully-IoT connected and takes data from a wide range of sensors to deliver analytics and provide innovators with the scope and ability to meet rapidly growing demand for UBI.

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Octo will form a strategic alliance with Willis Towers Watson, focusing on advancing UBI data analytics. The alliance will be led by Octo under the guidance of an advisory board chaired by Geoff Werner.

From Octo, Gianfranco Giannella, chief operating officer, and Jonathan Hewett, chief marketing officer, will serve on the board, alongside Willis Towers Watson personnel Duncan Anderson, global leader of insurance technology, and Tom Coughlin, national partner of Willis Towers Watson North America.

Strategy consulting firm Ptolemus predicts UBI policies will reach nearly 100 million worldwide by 2020. This comes at a time when more cars are connected — Octo alone has reached 5.3-million cars connected to its platform. PwC has predicted that sales of connected car products will increase almost four times between 2015 and 2020, adding more than US$149 billion in revenues in the passenger car segment alone.