Thatcham Tracker Systems

Why do Insurers request Thatcham Certified Trackers ?

Insurance companies are at risk from theft and can mitigate the risk by requesting owners to fit high quality and independantly tested after theft recovery tracking systems.

Automatrics were the first company to take a self powered tracker through Thatcham in 2009 and we continued to have our products certified until 2018. We propsed a new points based system standard in 2013 which was supported by SBD and NaVCIS police, howerever this was deemed too complicated by Thatcham.

Thatcham security / theft recovery standards have slipped since Oct 2018. The ABI focus is now more on autonomous breaking and the Thatcham 8 man security team has now been reduced to 2. The insurers wanted to open up more affordable easy to manage security systems, however just about any GPS device can pass it as long as it can last 2 minutes !... more affordable does not bring more performance. Thatcham do not consider a tracking companies theft recovery performance (real word recovery system performance). Automatrics have 98% recovery performance. Thatcham do not consider customer service. Automatrics have an independent 5 star customer service https://www.workingfeedback.co.uk/reviews/car-security/lee-on-the-solent/trackersecurity.co.uk

The October 2018 new Thatcham S5 and S7 standards are rigid and easily defeated, most systems are wired to the vehicle and give off traceable signals, they can even still have external antennas, all rendered useless by a £5 GPS jammer. We do not agree with Thatcham setting a fix rigid standard for all companies to build similar devices. Thatcham also fail to recognise additional high functionality, or performance or customer services. The rigid fixed standard from Thatcham basically means there is no need for suppliers to innovate new high performing solutions which can keep pace with criminals. Instead they innovate to get the lowest manufacture cost to pass Thatcham.

For these reasons Automatrics no longer look at Thatcham as being the security standard benchmark in theft recovery tracking system or approvals.