Motor Insurers' Bureau chief executive Ashton West is determined to rejuvenate the organisation Staff training, claims leakage and uninsured driver claims are at the top of his agenda.
Ashton West has a difficult job. As chief executive of the Motor Insurers' Bureau (MIB), he has the challenge of turning the much-maligned organisation into a well-oiled machine.
When he joined the MIB in April 2003, he inherited an organisation that was widely slated for its out-date technology, poor claims handling and lack of professionalism.
"The challenge for me," says West, "was to transform the people, building and company into a centre of excellence and to address the disease of uninsured motoring."
West admits that the MIB was not always perceived in the best light.
"It was mainly down to the fact that some of the processes it took on had been implemented by the industry 20 to 30 years previously," he says.
"But it didn't have the large volumes of claims it has now. Also the levy at the time didn't excite attention and no one seemed interested in changing anything. The MIB at the time was also more secretarial and legally driven."
West is now pushing through a series of major changes. He put the organisation through a massive internal restructure, which included enhanced training for staff. His next challenge is to tackle the issue of uninsured driver claims.
Reducing the number of uninsured driver claims - including claims leakage and claims lifecycles - is a major concern for West.
In 2003, the MIB handled £235m uninsured claims and its handling costs hit the £11m mark. The weight of this is on the motor insurance industry, which has to contribute a 100% levy to support victims who make claims against uninsured drivers.
West's strategy to reduce claims is to ensure that the MIB's motor insurance database (MID) has full records of registered vehicles along with insurance records and to match this with DVLA data.
But this has been thwarted by bureaucracy and the fact that the MID, which has cost the company £25m over five years, is not used to its full capacity.
West says: "Our problem is trying to persuade the police to make use of the system and to treat uninsured driving as a serious crime. Currently, we have 25,000 police inquiries a day but there are some police forces that don't even use it."
Even before the MIB can address the problem of low levels of police usage, it has to make access to the database easier for the police. Legislation currently prohibits the police from accessing DVLA data, which makes use of automatic number plate recognition technology.
"This means that if cameras photograph the number plate of a car which turns out to be uninsured, the police can't act further on it. It's one impediment that prevents more effective use of the database, but we hope to make something happen this year," says West.
Database improvements
The fact that the MIB is still fighting legislation means that it is far behind Europe as well.
"We want to reduce our claims from 4% down to 1%, in line with Europe.
Some European countries have a similar system to our MID and the ones who make full use of it are the most successful," said West.
Even the database itself needs some improvements. It does not have information on all vehicles in the UK and it is not always up to date. "The vehicle population recorded on our database is around 32 million but the total vehicle population is in excess of about 33 million," says West.
"Our target, by 2005, is to have 95% of all vehicle records up to date on our database within 14 days. Currently, whenever details change we only manage to upload 85% of changes within 14 working days."
Staff training is high on West's agenda. He says that if the MIB is to attain its goals, much more training is needed.
"We brought our claims handling in house and tripled our training budget.
Claims handling was previously done by the members themselves. We had excellent claims handlers but there weren't any wider general management skills."
Other challenges facing the MIB are reducing claims leakage and claim lifecycles. West would not comment on the level of leakage, but he said that the MIB aims to see a reduction of 2%-3% this year.
To combat the leakage problem, MIB installed CSC's Colossus software.
"We went live with it last month and our staff had to be trained to use the facility. It's too early yet to measure its success but early feedback is positive," says West.
West would also not comment on the lifecycle levels at the moment or his plans for their reduction.
Re-engineering process
"We are currently looking at running the first phase of a re-engineering process to deal with this problem. That is all I am prepared to say at this point," he says.
Despite the difficulties, West remains optimistic about the future. "We want to continue to fulfil our role for stakeholders, government and victims of uninsured drivers. We also want to create more awareness of uninsured drivers."
He also points at an even bigger challenge ahead. "We must eventually benchmark ourselves against how the industry performs.
"It's a big challenge for the bureau but will help change it into a modern day claims processing centre."
