Sandy Dunn, Wunelli

The government wants to tackle the UK’s compensation culture, but I fear they could miss a huge opportunity to exploit telematics for this purpose. Agreed, customers who choose to be monitored are less likely to commit fraud, but the real benefit to insurers is in tackling third-party claims fraud, staged accidents and the scourge of the industry - whiplash claims.

Usage-based insurance helps fight fraud in terms of verification of the vehicle and the proposer, and at the point of a claim to verify the location and accelerators to assess force and velocities at point of impact.

This data is hugely valuable in validating anecdotal evidence and can provide the basis to reject third-party personal injury claims, establish liability, challenge severity and recover stolen vehicles.

As more insurers launch telematics solutions, driven in part by the EU gender ruling, telematics’ role in combating fraud needs to be fully realised.

Sandy Dunn is chairman of Wunelli