Quindell misses out on AA deal

TECHNOLOGY group Quindell has suffered the first serious blow on its path to recovery after missing out on a major contract with the AA, writes Peter Campbell.

The company, after a turbulent two years, now focuses almost exclusively on processing data from vehicle black boxes for insurance companies, called telematics.

A previous contract with the RAC, in which it installed the tracking boxes in customers’ cars, was scrapped last September. Now the AA is set to unveil a deal with Quindell’s Japanese-owned rival Insurethebox.

In exchange for agreeing to have their driving style monitored and tracked, young motorists receive a discount on their premiums.

‘ The deal means t hat Insurethebox becomes the sole provider of telematics car insurance to the AA Driving School,’ the firm said.

Insurethebox is owned by Japan’s ANDIE, which bought it for £105m last year. A consortium of earlier backers includes Lloyd’s of London insurer Catlin.

It is exactly the sort of deal that Quindell, which has appointed technology specialist Indro Mukerjee to be its chief executive, would have hoped to win.

Losing its RAC contract was a blow to Quindell, which at the time was run by its now- disgraced founder Rob Terry. The deal had been engineered so that the RAC would benefit according to Quindell’s share price, which had been rising steadily for two years.

But shortly after the deal was struck, questions were raised about the company’s accounting practice – which are now the subject of a Serious Fraud Office investigation. This caused Quindell’s shares to sink, and RAC pulled out before a single black box could be installed, in a major humiliation to the firm.

Quindell’s board has since been cleared out.