By Matteo Carbone, Founder & Director, IoT Insurance Observatory —
Twelve years ago, a project with Octo Telematics changed my career. I would not be here doing what I’m doing without: that project that disrupted my 2013 summer holidays, and the engagement of my LinkedIn network with my telematics discussions over the following 36 months
This is not “another” publication for me; it’s the completion of a cycle, and a concentration of facts and figures about something I’ve ranted on stages around the world for the past decade.
When telematics was only considered a pricing sophistication tool, I was advocating on adding an additional use case: use the same data to manage claims better. Today I’m proud—truly proud—to share a paper that closes that argument and opens a playbook: Extracting Benefits from the Commercial Auto Insurance Claims Value Chain
With this paper, we wanted to prove a simple idea: when you wire the claims value chain with real-time data, commercial auto can move from chronic pain to sustainable profit.
The thesis is direct: three telematics levers (Crash Management, Accident Reconstruction, and Fraud Detection) deliver material, compounding gains. In aggregate, applied to a commercial auto portfolio, they can improve Loss and LAE by 20 percentage points, turning a 107% combined ratio into ~93% post-transformation.
With OCTO’s proven deployments and methodology, a commercial auto carrier can achieve a return of $3 for every $1 invested on telematics-based claims.
And speed matters: Because the market needs a path that’s pragmatic, de-risked, and fast to value. That’s why we detail a small-scale outsourced program with OCTO × Sedgwick—a turnkey approach designed for “quick wins,” operational simplicity, and measurable impact. Pilots can go live within months and scale once the ROI is proven
For me, this paper is personal. Telematics pivoted my consulting career. It began with OCTO; twelve years later, we reunited to codify what many of you have heard me say for a decade: claims is the frontline of value creation when trusted data, automated workflows, and AI-graded evidence fuel it
If your FNOL still begins with a phone call, you’re competing with yesterday. If your adjusters still argue facts without telemetry, you’re negotiating in the dark
To every carrier CFO, CUO, Head of Claims, and to every fleet insurer under pressure: benchmark your current state against this playbook. Ask yourself:
- Which claims should be straight-through today?
- Where can crash dossiers replace conjecture with clarity?
- How much Loss+LAE are we leaving on the table each quarter?
I’m grateful to the teams at OCTO and Sedgwick for their partnership and to the IoT Insurance Observatory community that has pushed this thinking forward
The future isn’t abstract; it’s operational, measurable, and ready to deploy
Access the paper: Extracting Benefits from the Commercial Auto Insurance Claims Value Chain
Telematics can transform the commercial auto insurance sector by enhancing efficiency and reshaping claims management. Through key applications such as Crash Management, Accident Reconstruction, and Fraud Detection, it enables insurers to leverage data-driven insights to streamline operations, improve decision-making, and prevent fraud.
By integrating telematics across the claims value chain, insurers can achieve faster, fairer, and more transparent processes—building a more sustainable and profitable business model in an increasingly data-driven industry.
About The Author
Matteo Carbone is the founder and director of the IoT Insurance Observatory, co-founder of Archimede Spac, and a global InsurTech thought leader and investor. He is internationally recognized as an insurance industry strategist with a specialization on innovation. Matteo is author and world-renowned authority on InsurTech – ranked among top international InsurTech Influencers – and he has spoken to audiences in twenty different countries. He published the first bestseller dedicated to InsurTech: “All the insurance players will be insurtech” and is member of the Forbes New York Business Council. Matteo has advised more than 100 different players in ten insurance markets around the world and has wide insurance experience which includes set up of industrial and commercial plans, growth strategy definition and support in the start-up of new initiatives, digital strategy development, insurance products innovation, channel strategy and commercial model definition, startups mentorship and advice M&A deals. He has worked directly with players accounting for more than 80% of the international IoT insurance volumes (number of policies on auto telematics, smart home, and connected health). Before creating the IoT Insurance Observatory and co-founding Archimede, he spent eleven years in Bain & Company’s Financial Service practice.
About IoT Insurance Observatory
The IoT Insurance Observatory is a global insurance think-tank which has put together executives from more than 70 insurance groups, institutions and the Internet of Things ecosystem to discuss the great potential of the most mature InsurTech trend, as well as the challenges it poses to the insurance business. The focus is on any insurance solution based on sensors for collecting data on the state of an insured risk and telematics for remote transmission and management of the data collected. For more information, visit iotinsobs.com.
About Octo Telematics
OCTO has always been at the forefront of innovation in the connected mobility sector. A pioneer in insurance telematics, today the company is the main advanced telematics and technology solutions provider also in the Fleet Management and Smart Mobility industries, leveraging on Machine Learning and AI to transform IoT data into actionable intelligence. Thanks to its know-how, the expertise developed in over 20 years of global advanced analytical services, and its M&A strategy, OCTO is spreading the value of advanced data analytics through its scalable platform to serve worldwide end worldwide end users of different mobility applications with a superior customer experience. Through different business applications and use cases, OCTO is bringing telematics at the core of the smart cities as advocate of the global goals of sustainability thanks to OCTO Vision Zero: Zero Crashes, Zero Congestion, Zero Pollution. OCTO has currently 5,7 million connected users, holds the largest global database of telematics data, with more than 552 billion Km of driving data collected and over 514,000 crashes and insurance events analyzed. For more information, please visit www.octotelematics.com.
SOURCE: Matteo Carbone
