—– Original Message —–

From: Salvador Minguijon

To: Salvador Minguijon

Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 7:45 PM

Subject: “Pay As You Drive” On-Line Seminar

Dear ladies and gentlemen:

    I hope you can forgive me because of writting to you again, but have received some news that I believe that could be interesting for many of you.

    The Company IMS has organized an On-Line seminar that will be celebrated in the 12 of December, which is obligatory to register for the attendance.

    In the seminary participates Todd Litman, of the VTPI. To my point of view, the greater world-wide expert in mobility and also in the project of the system “Pay As You Drive”.

    IMS is a Canadian company with a extremely great creative and innovating technical capacity.

    They have developed a comprehensive “Pay As You Drive” application called IPAYD, adding themselfs by this way to the group of Siemens,T-System and Octotelematics.

    It is necessary to remember also that there are insurance companies that have developed (Norwich) or that are developing (Swiss-Re and Progressive) its own solution, and that could be arranged to share this technology with other insurance companies.

    And we cannot either forget Applied Location Corporation, with whose technical solution would be quite simple that an insurance company creates its own project. Neither to IBM that is working in other markets, maybe easier, immediater and with more potential.

    And taking advantage of this opportunity I want to comment you that, against everything that was to hope, the concept “Road Charge“, that is to say, to pay taxes by the real use of road infrastructures, is having a good popular acceptance.

    Obvious it is not something that can excite the users, but its maturity and common sense make them understand that there is something that must be done and that the project “Road Charge” is reasonable.

    Thank you very much.

    Yours sincerely

                                                            Salvador Minguijon Perez

http://terra.es/personal/smp00000/home_archivos/Pay_as_you_drive_directory.htm

—– Original Message —–

From: Salvador Minguijon

To: Salvador Minguijon

Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2006 6:01 PM

Subject: “Pay As You Drive” Information

>>Dear gentlemen and ladies:
>>
>>     I believe that we are all pending of how the project of Norwich in England is being developed. In a good symptom of the importance of the project, this month we had pressreleases Smart421 and Navteq.
>>
>>     I kindly recommend to visit the presentation site of the policy “Pay as you drive”, that is also an indicator of how Norwich is taking care of all the aspects related to this project.
>>
>>     We can find some commentaries of the expectations of the project, but the truth is that they are quite vague. Lets hope the principle of the year, Norwich makes an official declaration of how the things are being developed.
>>
>>     In England there are some factors that are in favor of Norwich, the English government wants to emphasize the programs against the global heating. It also has an urgent necessity to solve the problems of congestion of traffic and the project of Norwich is for the government a unique opportunity to experience this solution without dedicating economic and organizational efforts.
>>
>>     The truth is that it is surprising that Norwich is being able to manage and to lead this project by itself, without having to depend on a technological company. I do not believe that there is another insurance comany in the world more able to develop a project of this type.
>>
>>     The main reasons why Norwich has embarked in this adventure is its desire to increase its quota in the automobile insurance until the levels that they consider that would have to correspond to them and feel that their efforts are protected by patents, in such a way that they can work with middle and length term strategies.
>>
>>     In the United States, in spite of the interest that demonstrates the public administration, you can not see some company that bets firmly by the project. This is because Progressive feels comfortable with its quota of market and their patents block the activity of other insurance agencies.
>>
>>     Recently Mark Nowotarski explained why it was possible that there was a patent in Europe and another one in the United States. What I have not managed to find out is the situation in Canada, country where there are several companies very interested in this subject. In fact I believe that it is very probable that this country goes ahead to U.S.A.
>>
>>    I always recommend to the insurance companies interested in this project to try to establish a frame of collaboration with Norwich. But, if this is not possible, a good option, to test first with the project, is to collaborate with Octotelematics, like Uniqa began to do recently. It is a company that dedicates an exquisite attention to the insurance agencies.
>>
>>    Another totally different problem is if it has been decided to commercialize the product In this case the definition of the project and the election of the partners must become on more solid bases.
>>
>>    Winterthur is going to begin to prove an old project that has been developing for years with Siemens, that treats to offer a discount to the young conductors who install a black box in their vehicle, whose data would be analyzed in case of accident. Traditionally there have been many discussions on if this is going to improve the conduction habits or no. This test will allow us to find out this finally.
>>
>>    This is an alternative product to the projects “Pay as you drive” as it defines the European patent EP0700009 that basically consist on pricing the insurance of the automobile in function data that reflect their use.
>>
>>    Another alternative product was the Sarafree policy, that allowed by telephone to activate complete days and that therefore did not need any aditional hardware. Nevertheless it seems that this has caused many problems and finally the project will include an equipment in the vehicle that controls its use (also of Octotelematics), denominating it SaraFreeKm policy, and being totally in the concept of the projects “Pay as you drive”.
>>
>>    Returning to the system “Pay as you drive”, it was published a quite complete description of the Siemens project, although it only is in Italian.
>>
>>    The bad news is that IBM has retired of Internet the presentation of Christina Groetzner on the project “Pay as you drive”. I suppose that they considered that it contained strategic information.
>>
>>    Normally I only make reference to documents published in Internet. But Kevin Borras has given me the first number of the magazine Thinking Highway, in which there are some very interesting articles. I was specially surprised by the one that talks about the development of the systems of the traffic management in China.
>>
>>    I have published the article Strategic Positioning of the Insurance Companies regarding the projects “Pay As You Drive” I hope that you like and that it is useful for you.
>>
>>    As always, I have updated my data base “Pay As You Drive Directory”.
>>
>>Yours sincerely.
>>
>>
>>
>>                                                                    
>>Salvador Minguijon Perez.

Strategic Positioning of the Insurance Companies regarding the projects “Pay As You Drive”

The insurance companies have different attitudes with regarding to this project and although it is strange that even inside the own company this attitude is shared, we could classify them as the following: 
 
– There is a scarce number of companies that see in this product the opportunity to increase their participation in this market. They are usually companies with a great economic potential but a relative low market quota.

 They think that this product is applicable to most of the market, because of two very important characteristics. Its capacity to segment the market and to influence in the risk of its clients. Both characteristics will generate a big distorsion and crisis in the market.

 This attitude implies a great financial and management effort, so it is only probable in countries where there are patents that can protect this activities. So we refer to U.S.A, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and perharps in Canada.

 These companies are usually open to strategic alliances to share the development investments, using some synergies. But without losing the control of the project because they know that it will be very difficult to defend in the future the market quota that they have won with lot of effort, if they have to strategically depend on other companies.  
 
 
– Most of the companies of insurance see in this application a new possibility to segment the market, only interesting in concrete niches, as young drivers, vehicles of low use, etc. This can represent approximately a potential market of 10% of the users. Something more if it is possible to add to this product some additional features, such as roadside assistance, anti-theft, fleets management, information, mantenance, etc.

 These companies usually try to access to this market through agreements of collaboration with other companies that are already offering it or technology companies that already have it developed. They don’t usually understand the reasons why the technical solutions they are looking for are so expensive, complex and powerful because for what they need it wouldn´t be neccesary to use so many resources. However those that have deeply explored the topic have realized that the product has to be reinforced with the offer of other services that will increase its value for the client and that it should not require of the client’s action.

 Some companies, usually lively by small technology companies, have proven the project more or less seriously and they have been surprised about the enormous complexity of the same.

 Some are considering to use the services of a technological company that offeres a completely developed product. However they trip with two inconveniences, the first one is that they know that their competitors will inmediately take advantage of their commercial efforts to introduce the product, and the second is that in fact there are several companies that show off of having the product, but any has it in the market yet.. The technology companies are seen by the insurance companies like kamikazes.
 
– The companies that achieve benefits and have good penetration in the market, see the danger that their product suffers a decline phase. Their strategies are based on carrying out a technological surveillance, which allows them to adapt quickly to the market if it is necessary or to develop alternative products.

 The thing is still more complicated because in some countries there is political govermental to develop the project “Pay as you drive” that is due to the economic interests that moves around the “Road charge” project.

 Some of them, especially in U.S.A and England, have been surprised by the strategies of protection of the intellectual property of their competitors, in such a way that their reaction possibilities are very restricted. In some of these cases they have appealed to propose non aggression pacts.
– The companies that don’t achieve neither benefits neither a good penetration in the market, are horrified as the market gets complicated more and more. They carry out technological surveillance with the objective of leaving the market if they see clear symptoms that projects “Pay as you drive” will implant in the market.