OK, so motor insurers behave a little strangely from time to time (see previous stories), but surely no one would accuse them of being mad. Not clinically-insane-type mad. But apparently they would be if they didn’t seize the chance to adopt the new MyLicence online drivers licence checking thingy.
That is the considered opinion of ‘Mad Keith’ Morris, “project chair” (a designation perhaps somehow akin to “class bike”) of the snappily entitled Insurance Industry Access to Driver Data (I˘IADD) project, as well as being a senior Sabre man.
Frustratingly, motor insurers will have to wait until June (probably) for a chance to disprove any sanity cynics. For, that, as you have doubtless already inferred, is when MyLice is due to ‘go live’.
The I˘IADD project (currently in a very exciting testing phase) is the polyparental brainchild of eleven different companies, including brokers, insurers, and soft warehouses, apparently. And, before anyone accuses Bankstone News of unattributed plagiarism, let us be absolutely clear (as, indeed, everyone aspires to be these days): we copied all this slavishly from the illustrious pages of Insurance Times.
It was in those very same pages we learned, with some astonishment, how the widespread adoption of MyLichees will save honest motorists at least 2% a year on their motor insurance – with the obvious implication that the outlook for dishonest motorists (that’s most of us, let’s face it, if we truly scour our souls for lurking disingenuity), may be rather less bright.
“The average price of a premium consists of people who are lying and people who are not,” Keith explains. “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.” Bankstone News hopes you are following this carefully. “I can’t predict how much it will be, but it will be a few percent certainly,” Morris predicts.
The prospect of an easy-reference future in which liars pay more to insure, certainly sounds appealing. But will it work – and will it be ready on time?
“We are expecting go live still to be in the second quarter,” Keith avers. “I don’t think it will be April,” he predicts, neatly sidestepping any mention of the unlucky M month by noting that “I hope it will be by June.”
“It rather depends on everyone in the chain adopting it,” he admits, perhaps explaining the vehemence of his universal-adoption advocacy.“All insurers have a choice whether to take it up,” he allows, “or not.”
But ultimately, “it’s a no-brainer to do it,” he says, “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.”
That certainly doesn’t sound like much of a brainer to Bankstone News.
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