Sabre chairman calls on insurers to adopt MyLicence

Motor insurers would be “mad” not to adopt the new MyLicence scheme which will give them instant online access to an applicant’s driving history, the Insurance Industry Access to Driver Data (IIADD) project chair Keith Morris has said.

The project, which is set to go live in June, will enable insurers to see DVLA information on a driver’s convictions and penalty points to help them price policies more accurately.

LV= is among 11 companies, including brokers, insurers and software houses that are involved in the project and the testing phase.

Next month the MIB will open up registration to other organisations and give them access to the technical documents they’ll need to use the service.

Sabre Insurance chairman Morris said insurers could also save money from reducing the amount of time and money spent on validating applications.

Additionally, ‘honest’ customers are expected to get discounts passed onto them from premiums of dishonest motorists or those with poor claims histories that have shot up.

“The average price of a premium consists of people who are lying and people who are not,” Morris told Insurance Times. “So once we start charging the people who are lying the correct price, then for the people who haven’t been lying their price will go down. I can’t predict how much it will be, but it will be a few percent certainly.

“Over time everyone will want to adopt this because if you have got sure data that has come from a trusted source then you can reduce the price for people who don’t have any convictions.

“All insurers have a choice whether to take it up or not. It’s a no-brainer to do it because if you don’t someone is getting better data from you. If you are getting bad data you are going to lose. That’s the way pricing works.”

Testing

Morris said the scheme which was launched back in November by the ABI and the MIB in partnership with the DVLA and Department of Transport is still on track to meet its June deadline.

Tests will start later this month to assess how well information is being transferred between the DVLA and the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB).

The information being sent to aggregators, brokers and insurers will also need to be tested before the scheme is rolled out.

The DVLA has to verify the database it is using to supply information to the MIB hub works properly as it leaves its main system.

Additionally, the testing will also determine if the MIB hub can cope with the amount of information it is receiving.

Morris said: “As far as we are concerned the project is very much on time. There isn’t any shortfall in testing at the moment and there is an expectation that everything will still be available to the original schedule.

“We are expecting go live still to be in the second quarter. I don’t think it will be April. I hope it will be by June.

“It rather depends on everyone in the chain adopting it. And as far as I am concerned there is good progress with most of the components in the chain.”

A DVLA spokeswoman said in preparation they have started to link their software system to the MIB’s to enable the transfer of information.