Motor Insurers' Database

Over the next year a number of important initiatives are being implemented to tackle the ongoing battle against uninsured drivers.

These include greater use of number plate recognition cameras to identify uninsured vehicles and track their movements; new hand-held technology to check vehicle details at the roadside; the implementation of the Serious Organised Crime Act and the imposition of tougher penalties.

In my mind, these initiatives have the potential to make a real difference in reducing the number of uninsured vehicles on our roads, but they can't work alone. We still need to be able to access, utilise and share accurate, up-to-date information via the Motor Insurance Database (MID).

Without this vital support, our collective ability to increase the pressure on these drivers will be severely undermined.

The insurance sector is making progress in providing information to the MID. Many insurers are already compliant and all others are working hard towards compliance. However, to meet the proposed 7 day target, as well as achieving the existing 14 day target in relation to intermediary business, further improvements are needed.

This is especially relevant to manually processed business, where delay in submission by some brokers and insurer backlogs in processing, compound the problem, ultimately delaying the required information being sent to the database.

Both brokers and insurers who use electronic trading are also guilty of delaying the flow of information: the former have been known to backdate transactions via override facilities and insurers have utilised days of grace and auto-renew at renewals.

If information isn't provided in a timely manner, or is forwarded haphazardly, then delays and difficulties are created further down the line, resulting in inaccurate and out-of-date information being stored on the MID.

So, what can be done? For a start, insurers, brokers and software houses need to work in partnership now to ensure MID compliance.

Ideally, all business should be transmitted electronically on the effective date, ensuring that key information is sent to the MID on time.

The MIIC Statement of Best Practice issued in November 2004 needs to be adopted, in particular, deleting the days of grace and moving from auto-renew to auto-lapse. In fact, Highway was the first insurer to adopt auto-lapse.

The Manual Business Information Sheet, which was recently sent to insurers by the MIIC, needs to be embraced by all. The MIIC has asked insurers to adopt this form as best practice and it is important that all insurers comply. BIBA and the IIB both support this best practice procedure.

At the beginning of this year, Highway started to use a variation of this form, which has dramatically increased the number of brokers submitting the relevant MID information within the 14 day target period.

Software Houses also have a key role to play in ensuring MID compliance. Despite having to cope with numerous requests from insurers for scheme enhancements and new developments to assist their MID objectives, software houses do need to change their systems as soon as possible to comply. Some software houses are gearing up to release changes in the next few months that will have a positive impact on time to supply targets.

And finally, brokers need to buy-in to the whole process. They need to truly understand the consequences of non-compliance and their role in keeping an up-to-date MID. Intermediary Insurers, like Highway, rely on their broker partners to play their part in reaching compliance. Without this support compliance will indeed prove a very difficult nut to crack!

By enforcing a unified and committed approach to capturing critical data across the entire sector, we can hope to achieve significant reductions in the number of uninsured drivers across the UK.