Security & Allied Technologies Limited (SAATECH), a Lagos-based eSecurity services provider running on the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) and Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies has been in the business of car tracking in the last six years with an intimidating recovery success record. The company’s managing director and chief executive officer, Mr. Ndubueze Onyeka recently spoke to ROMMY IMAH on how it has been working with Insurance firms to provide Nigerian car owners security for their cars.......
Could you please introduce us to what Security and Allied Technologies Limited (SAATECH) is doing?
Security and Allied Technologies Limited, SAATECH is primarily into eSecurity with bias for vehicle tracking, CCTV, Access Control, Burglar Alarm and Biometrics. The company started in 2005 with CCTV and had pioneer clients as Julius Berger and First Bank in security service provision. In 2006, the company moved into vehicle tracking, security and fleet management. We were then servicing Julius Berger where we did a number of vehicles, trucks and vessels. From there, we moved to First Bank where we were involved in the tracking of their corporate pools. By the end of 2006 we began to get patronage from Insurance companies when we developed the product offering of vehicle tracking and tailored it to the needs of Insurance companies to support their comprehensive motor products.
As an emerging market, we were able to redesign tracking product offering. Presently, we have one of the largest clientele in vehicle tracking with respect to the Insurance sub-sector. There is virtually no Insurance company in Nigeria today that does not patronize SAATECH. We have the likes of IGI, IEI, AIICO, Insurance PHB, Starco, Leadway, GNI and a whole lot of other insurance companies. We are doing well.
What is SAATECH’s unique selling point, that which distinguishes you from your competitors?
What distinguishes us primarily is the wholesale technology we bring to the Nigerian market. What I mean by this is that I don’t know of any other tracking company in the country whose server is domiciled here in Nigeria other than SAATECH. Besides, we have about four enterprise server solutions for vehicle tracking, and this has given us a lot of edge such that we can respond to any challenge at any time. Vehicle tracking is a timely service for example if a customer’s vehicle is stolen say 11.00pm or 12.00am; he (the customer) expects prompt response. And because we have a server here managed 24/7, we are able to respond to such challenge promptly. This is a different story when the server is domiciled in U.K, USA or Germany; check out what problem distance would have caused. Our greatest unique selling point is that we are here in Nigeria, and our server is domiciled here in Nigeria. We have designed this business to meet the needs of Nigerians; we understand the environmental factor in Nigeria. Security service provision and vehicle tracking in particular is something you have to look into the environment before you start offering the service. We tailor our service to solving the needs of our clients.
We are very sensible with our pricing; we negotiate any size of job. No job is small, from one vehicle to a pool of vehicles; we have the appropriate and customer-friendly pricing that our customers appreciate. And we are ever ready to negotiate prices as this has been giving us the edge above competition.
Ever since you commenced business in 2006, have you had the challenge of customers coming back with reports of missing vehicles? If so, were you able to recover such vehicles?
Vehicle tracking is all about vehicle recovery, and like I said earlier, we have through our services been giving support to Insurance companies. We are having a boom as a result of this. We have one of the largest numbers of Insurance companies as our clientele pooled together on our network. It is a function of the recoverability of their vehicles and even timely.
Yes, we have been recovering vehicles even cross border recovery as far as Cameroon, Niger, Ghana and some neighbouring countries with the help of Interpol; the
testimonies are there. I can say we recover vehicles almost on monthly basis; the statistics is overwhelming.From your experience, would you say Nigerians are conscious of the security of their cars? Are you getting enough patronage or are there still doubts?
Yes, Nigerians are really conscious of the security of their vehicles but that is not to say that there are no doubts still. Some people are still pessimistic about tracking and what benefits it can offer the vehicle owner. However, from what we have seen from our synergy with Insurance companies, we now know that tracking is driving the comprehensive motor business of Insurance firms. What that means is that people before now, will just do their comprehensive and rely on claims settlement. But this time round, we see Insurance companies be in the fore-front of the tracking business. To corroborate what I have just said, the Insurance companies give out this tracking in a wholesale manner as if it belongs to them meaning that there is greater acceptance out there. It is a confirmation that Nigerians accept tracking as the best means of securing their vehicles even though there is some percentage which are sceptical about the workings of the tracking technology. And that is why we still need to do more work in awareness creation.
To that effect, SAATECH has decided to go a step further in driving this vehicle tracking business to the domain of Third Party motor insurance. What we are now doing in this area is to tell the public to take SAATECH auto tracking solution and we give them option of insuring their vehicles genuinely. What I mean by this is that there are a lot of fake insurance agents around that hijack Third Party motor insurance. And you know that by law, Third Party motor insurance is compulsory. What SAATECH is therefore, doing, is that for the general mass market, we are partnering with the Insurance firms to pay them for each and every client that takes up SAATECH auto tracking called MassTrack. This is genuine Third Party.
I can tell you there are benefits for genuine Third Party Insurance which includes N1million in case you are liable. To some Nigerians, they don’t know that they are doing themselves disservice by patronizing fake insurance agents and brokers. So, what we are saying is that if you take MassTrack or SAATECH Auto Tracking solution, we will place your Third Party Insurance with a genuine underwriter through the insurance brokers so that in case of accident or death, you will get a claim. But when you patronize fake insurance agents, you lose these things. And we are also saying that beyond the benefit of genuine Third Party Insurance cover, which you will get tracking, in case of theft of your vehicle, we will recover it for you. These are the advantages we are bundling together for the Third Party Insurance people which by law, is compulsory for all car owners in the country.
Has car tracking business helped in reducing the rate of car theft in the country?
I told you earlier on that we have been recovering; there is no month that we don’t recover one or two vehicles. In the few years we’ve been in business, we’ve recovered well over 300 vehicles for various Insurance companies. We have lost some but have equally recovered plenty of vehicles. And in cases where we couldn’t recover cars, it was because the device was compromised before we got the information and so, we could not trace it. However, this case is in a very minimal percentage.
We are proud to say that we are happy that we are filling a gap in the society, where crime and car theft is in the increase because of the perennial security situation in the country. We are contributing our quota in respect of our area of core competence and business objective.
What would you say are the major challenges faced by vehicle tracking companies in Nigeria?
The major challenge we face in this business is absence of regulation; there is no regulation yet, the issue of regulation is critical in this business. There is no regulation for new entrants; anybody comes in any time and starts the business of car tracking. There is no organised body regulating the operators and operation of car tracking in the country. The market is still very frail, and what this has caused is proliferation of sub-standard operators. I know that the NCC has come up with some standardization asking that car tracking operators should register with the Commission. But that has not stopped the proliferation.
What we have observed is that the larger consumers out there are not content-driven because tracking as a business is content-driven. In vehicle tracking, what differentiates SAATECH’s application from that of any other operator is a function of the content we offer. But because there are no regulations, there are a lot of people out there showcasing different solutions under the generic name, vehicle tracking.
The issue of pricing is another challenge because in the absence of a regulatory body, nobody controls price. This becomes another challenge because anybody offers anything in the market because he is not regulated. Again, because of what I have just said now, some so called tracking agents have aided car theft because most of them are not very clean. Before you chose a tracking company, you must first of all do a due diligence of their background because if as a car tracker I know where your vehicle is at any point in time; if I can mobilise or demobilise your car from my control system then, I can equally abuse that technology. There are cases like that.
There is also infrastructural challenge considering the fact that vehicle tracking and fleet management is a telematics product. I mean telematics in the sense of installing equipment in a vehicle on a GSM platform for communication between the vehicle and the owner in a simplest form. We share the same infrastructural challenges as GSM service providers such as network congestion, epileptic power supply, base station vandalization and others. What this simply means is that without an effective and efficient GSM service, you cannot do effective and reliable vehicle tracking solution.
Take for instance the issue of Global Positioning System (GPS) which gives you the co-ordinates and the location information of the vehicle, if you have issue with the satellite generally, you will have issue with the location of your vehicle. So, whatever affects the carrier, affects us as operators in vehicle tracking. These are the challenges in the industry right now. We know some of these things will be corrected in the future as we move on.
But beyond car tracking, what other things is SAATECH into?
Right now like I said earlier, Security and Allied Technologies Limited (SAATECH) is an electronic solutions company. We are into other technology solution services like biometrics, access control but right now SAATECH is largely a company driving what I call Omni Control System. Omni Control System is a converged platform whereby vehicle and CCTV meet. SAATECH is right now driving a new technology in Estate surveillance whereby we deploy IP Cameras. These IP Cameras capture, store and send information to our control room where we monitor this Estate real time. Should there be some suspicious movements, we collaborate with security agents to make arrests in such Estate.
In the area of vehicle tracking, we’ve gone beyond private tracking for Insurance and individuals; we are championing public sector wholesale tracking application whereby we can set up control system that can monitor all the vehicles in Lagos State for example or Nigeria as a whole. We have the capacity to do that now. That is the new area we are moving into now; it is called Omni Control System. That is part of the new things that we are doing; it is still in line of vehicle tracking and telematics but this time around, it is a large pool beyond what the Insurance companies put together can give to us.
Beyond all of these, we are moving into other areas including Elevator; we have signed agreement with some Original Equipment Manufacturers in this regard.
What is the future of car tracking business in Nigeria?
The future is very, very bright. Like I said, it is an emerging market and it has come to stay. As long as there is GSM platform, as long as people continue to buy cars as a result of moving from one income bracket to another. As long as the issue of security in Nigeria as we see it now lingers, it becomes important that both government and citizens play one role or the other in fighting insecurity in the country. So, vehicle tracking and fleet management is partly a solution to the country’s security challenges because they thrive on GSM and satellite. The business indeed has a bright future.
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