Leaders in telematics join forces; customers will benefit from greater scale and innovation
Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), the global leader in mobile telematics and analytics, has acquired TrueMotion, the second largest mobile telematics provider. This acquisition, which closed yesterday, unites the two leading companies in the rapidly growing mobile telematics industry. CMT will now provide telematics services to 21 out of the 25 largest auto insurers in the United States, and across more than 20 countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, South Africa, Japan, and Australia.
Mobile telematics, which did not exist a decade ago, is estimated to become a $125 billion market in the next five years, powering the next generation of digital auto insurance. CMT’s platform combines sensor fusion, artificial intelligence, and behavioral science to enable insurers, rideshare companies, fleet operators, automakers, and the personal safety industry to accurately measure driving risk, help drivers become safer, and offer real-time crash assistance.
“With this acquisition, we will use our world-class talent, technology, and scale to help our partners overcome the complex challenges of global road safety,” said William Powers, CMT’s Chief Executive Officer. “Both companies have helped transform the auto insurance industry, powering the shift from traditional rating models to usage-based and behavior-based insurance. We are excited to work together to bring telematics solutions to the users of the 1.4 billion vehicles on the world’s roads.”
“We’re thrilled to join CMT to enable the future of auto insurance,” said Ted Gramer, TrueMotion’s CEO, who will become CMT’s Chief Operating Officer. “About a decade ago, both companies were founded in Cambridge with the same mission to make roads safer. Now, we are joining forces to accelerate this journey. This acquisition makes sense on so many levels.”
By focusing on how people drive instead of who they are, telematics programs provide unique predictive capabilities for risk segmentation for personal and commercial insurers. Telematics measures adverse behaviors that cause crashes, such as phone distraction, excessive speeding, and a pattern of hard braking, indicating lower focus. This is a huge shift from traditional factors, which correlate with crashes, but don’t cause them. Moreover, because drivers can control their telematics-based risk factors, they can reduce their crash risk and lower their insurance premiums using structured feedback and incentives. The two companies have proven these capabilities at scale with millions of users of mobile applications in more than 90 enterprise programs.
This acquisition also strengthens CMT’s ability to help insurers and the mobility industry modernize emergency response and claims processes. The advancements build on the companies’ innovations for real-time crash detection and AI-based crash reconstruction using high-frequency sensor data. The technology enables organizations to dispatch roadside assistance within seconds of a crash, receive detailed information about a crash in minutes, and improve damage assessment for insurance claims.
“The adoption of CMT’s telematics services has been growing exponentially since 2018, and with TrueMotion joining us, we are poised for even greater growth,” said Hari Balakrishnan, CMT’s Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. “We will not only widen our lead in smartphone telematics, but also use our combined talent to invent new products for risk measurement, contextual telematics, and crash mitigation across emerging mobile, IoT, connected-car, video, and sensing technologies. We look forward to developing and deploying these products to serve our partners and drivers everywhere.”
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