—– 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.
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>>    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.
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>>    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.
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>>    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.