Direct Line Group shareholders will be pleased this morning. The Group released a solid set of half year results, and declared another special dividend alongside a 5% hike in the usual payout. In total shareholders will receive 14.4p (about 5% of the current share price). It looks like they are making a habit of this, and long may it continue. If you are looking at a dependable income stock then DLG should be right up there as a main contender.
As a shareholder in Trakm8, I was also interested to ascertain any snippets of information that related to their Telematics contract with the Group. The key snippets are these:-
"Our performance has also allowed us to continue to invest in the future of our business, to enhance our product propositions and improve our customer experience. We have rolled out self-install telematics boxes, which will enable us to reward better driving, and we've made it easier to buy our Motor products on smartphones and tablets."
"Distribution - In April, the Group launched its self-install telematics proposition in the UK following a successful pilot. This supports the Group's strategic aim of being a leading operator in developing the telematics market and enables it to offer telematics to a broader range of customers. Take-up remains strong for Direct Line new policies with one in five under 25 year olds electing for telematics, with take-up increasing to more than 50% for new business sales to under 21 year olds over the phone."
"In addition, the Group continued to improve its pricing sophistication for renewing telematics policies and announced an equity investment in The Floow, the supplier of smartphone applications and telematics data analytics for the Direct Line DrivePlus telematics product range."
"Furthermore, the Commercial division is piloting telematics propositions with Direct Line for Business and NIG customers."
It's also interesting that Trakm8 are working closely alongside the Floow on developing the Telematics for Direct Line. I wonder if this tie up will extend to other clients?
I notice that the Floow have been working with AIG, Accenture and a South African company called Tracker in the past 18 months. Trakm8 in turn would bring Eon, St Gobain, the AA, Fujitsu and Kubota to the party.
A strategic partnership between the two with this list a major clients would be interesting to say the least.
The Floow's comments on Accenture are intriguing:- "Accenture is a global powerhouse in many areas of technology consulting, including advising the world's top insurers on new technology and science. We created a Telematics Pilot that is being run in North America and this will form the basis to many products from Accenture, watch this space!"
