Ask the expert

Similar questions are often asked of the Elite Uninsured Loss Recovery unit and the simple answer is "Yes".

A personal injury claim can be made up to three years from the date of the accident. The questioner states that the driver’s health problems are a result of the accident and I assume that the employee has already sought medical advice confirming this to be the case.

While many injuries are easily identifiable immediately following an accident, there are a surprising number that develop over a period of time.

If the nature of the injury causes discomfort while driving or manifests itself in other ways that cause a loss of concentration then you should not delay in firstly seeking medical advice and taking all the necessary precautions to ensure you are complying with health and safety and duty of care responsibilities.

Pain is a considerable dis-traction and any driver who is forced to frequently change position to relieve discomfort is not going to be paying full
attention to what is happening around them as they will, by necessity, be giving attention to their own state.

When it is suspected that a previous accident has resulted in an injury that could ad- versely affect a driver’s ability to remain safely in control of a vehicle, immediate action should be taken to eliminate risk to the driver and other road users.

Ensure you document events and pass all relevant medical reports to your service provider as quickly as possible even if it is close to three years after the event.
 

You should appoint your own accident management company, and insist that all your employees use it.

This puts you in control, so that you can ensure repairs are carried out properly to the vehicle (fulfilling your duty of care responsibilities), that the vehicle is out of action for as short a time as possible, and that there are no unexpected costs.

A reputable accident management company will not charge you for these services, and will actually leave you better off, by recovering any uninsured losses.

Many credit hire companies use the term accident management company to mask their true purpose. You can determine the difference by looking at how they earn their income. A credit hire company earns money from the hire, and the less scrupulous operators are often tempted to inflate hire costs by placing the driver in a higher grade car than the original or seeking to extend the hire period for longer than is absolutely necessary thereby inflating the claim cost.

Insurers are adept at fighting such cases, and if the credit hire operator fails to recover its costs they may look to the driver or fleet to make up the shortfall.

Reputable accident management companies will be focused on lower repair costs, reduced off road time and uninsured loss recovery, and earn their income from these areas. They will arrange hires or courtesy cars where appropriate, but it is not their focus.
 

A serious accident can be very traumatic, and some find it distressing to use a car that’s been badly damaged. It can seem impossible that the vehicle has been made roadworthy again. 

Companies also have a legal duty of care to make sure that any repairs carried out to their vehicles do not compromise safety.

Vehicle technology is now very complex. Manufacturers now use many different types of steels in their vehicles, and during a repair, these often require different methods of welding and joining to return the vehicles to its original strength. If this is not done with the correct equipment and method, the structure is weakened.

The repair industry has responded to the new technology with increased training and an accreditation scheme PAS125, which has its own Kitemark. In the future this will be a symbol of quality. 

By the end of 2009, we can expect all reputable body repair centres to display this Kitemark.
Until then, it is hard for a fleet manager to demonstrate how they assessed that a repair was carried out using the correct equipment and methodology.

That’s where an accident management company can help. All reputable accident management companies will have a focus on repair quality and methodology.

They run national networks of professionally assessed repairers, and have experienced engineers who manage every repair. This provides peace of mind to the employee and protects the company from unnecessary risk. They should also save you money on the repair.

Tax implications are very much dependent upon the size of the vehicle supplied. As courtesy cars are most likely to be small class ‘A’ vehicles, it is probable that your driver will receive some tax benefits.

Obviously, if it is a similar size car to that driven, there will be no tax benefits and any larger size car could incur higher tax charges. There is a trigger point of 30 days on any courtesy car usage, at which time the fleet may advise HMRC of a change of vehicle.

However, it is very rare for a repair to take as long as 30 days, the average repair times are bout 5 days for vehicles that remain mobile following an accident and 11 days for those immobilised. 

Your driver will not continue to pay benefit-in-kind tax on his company car while it is off the road if he is paying BIK on his/her courtesy car. 

You should be reassured that your driver is in a free courtesy car, rather than a hire car. This car is likely to be supplied by the garage provided by your accident management company and tells you that your accident management company is working to your advantage. 

Accident canagement companies should, as a matter of course, provide the fleet client with details of the courtesy car giving make, model, registration, P11D value and CO2 emissions after a period of 14 days. This will ensure that all of the relevant information is to hand in the event that the fleet has reason to use it.

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There are web-based solutions that allow you to track the progress of a repair in real time. They will allow you to see if a repair is delayed and predict when the borrowed vehicle will be returned. 

If you use an accident management company, they will monitor the progress of the repair and take action on your behalf.

The Elite portal (run for fleet clients by Elite Incident Management) has a secure access system that allows each depot to see progress on their vehicles only and you to see progress on everything.

It also contains information on repair costs, accident circumstances, uninsured loss recovery progress, and even provides photos of the vehicle that reveal any previously unreported damage.

With fleets such as yours it is difficult to hire exactly the same type of vehicle to replace the one being repaired. For example the original may have specific internal racking.

A good accident management company will have a dedicated repair management team to ensure your vehicle will be off the road for the least possible time and hire costs are kept to a minimum.

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Taking the years 2003 to 2008, the average repair cost increased by 14.7%. This increase was largely due to the price of parts and paint, as although labour increased slightly the average hours required to complete a repair fell and this effectively cancelled out increased labour costs.

This is an average increase, so the best managed fleets are achieving a much lower rate than this.

The real secret to having vehicles repaired safely but cost- effectively lies in using qualified engineers to negotiate repair method and cost on your or your insurer’s behalf. Engineers from accident management companies provide their services free of charge, if they are allowed to instruct the resulting repair.

If you start using qualified engineers to scrutinise repair estimates, you should see an immediate reduction in costs. This is because they work in partnership with the repairer to identify as many parts as possible that can be repaired rather than replaced. 

And, where replacement is necessary, they insist on the use of appropriate non-branded minimum cost parts that do not compromise vehicle safety. Most will also run their own repair network, so they can guarantee quality of repair.

This approach has resulted in safe quality repairs at costs significantly below the national average.

A good accident management company will help control your premiums in three ways. 

It will reduce the cost of repairing a vehicle when it is damaged in an accident, show how you can reduce repair costs by choosing different vehicles and advise on how to reduce the frequency of accidents through better risk management. 

All of these factors will be important in reducing your insurance costs in the future. 

The choice of repairer whose estimate and work is overseen by a knowledgeable and qualified engineer ensures cost and quality control.

Vast experience of repairs can show how different vehicle construction can influence repair cost, thereby allowing more informed choice when the time comes to replace vehicles.
You should expect your accident management company to analyse your own accident data and show where you are having accidents. 

They should suggest ways to reduce their frequency and severity. 

I would expect their recommendation to be more sophisticated than putting all your drivers through driver training.

Always check that your existing or proposed accident management company has the capability of working with you on this. If not, it’s certainly time to change to one that really can help you reduce your insurance premiums.

Firstly ensure you select an accident management company that provides a full range of services. 

Some companies masquerade as accident management and are only interested in dealing with your non-fault claims.

Next, make sure they can manage the various types of vehicles you run on your mixed fleet.
Some companies are experienced with cars but have little expertise with commercial vehicles where downtime can be vital. For peace of mind you may want a 24-hour service and your drivers will probably prefer to deal with a UK call centre, with repairs being carried out in BSi PAS 125 repairers to ensure quality is not compromised.

A company that can provide quality management information to assist you in reducing risk will also help with your duty of care responsibilities and health & safety requirements. 

A company that can provide a complete risk management package will work with you to reduce your incidents.

Above all, listen to the opinions and experience of your peers. There is little better than personal recommendation from your professional colleagues such as the readership of Fleet News.

It’s true that much publicity has been given to the need for having cars repaired by companies that have the right equipment and skills to properly repair body damage without compromising the vehicle’s integrity and occupant safety. 

Not so much press coverage has been given to commercial vehicles.

Extremely strong yet light weight tipper bodies have for some time been built in Italy, Spain and Poland, resulting in greater payload, long life and better fuel efficiency but the use of ultra high strength materials has been surprisingly slow to filter into LCV construction. 

It has now arrived and the benefits are considerable. 

However, it means that as much attention now has to be given to selecting the right repairer for these vehicles as it is for cars. 

Don’t compromise on safety. 

If the wrong repair method is used a subsequent impact could result in an unexpected and potentially dangerous shift in load and greater penetration into occupant space. 

Selecting a repairer suitable for the type of vehicle is essential. At Elite we are ensuring all our LCV repairers are PAS 125 BSi accredited by the end of this year providing peace of mind to all our fleet customers.

The changes will come into force in April 2010 and could well result in increased costs for you. Changes to civil procedure will affect personal injury claims of between £1,000 and £10,000.

The average time taken for a fleet to report a personal injury to the insurer is currently around 60 days. However the new rules will require insurers to make a liability decision within 15 business days of them receiving notification of the claim.

After April 2010, if the matter is reported to the insurer and the liability decision is within the revised timescale, the claimant costs may be as low or lower than they are now, varying between £400 and £1,450. But if the liability decision cannot be made within this time, it will fall outside process.

Realistically, if this happens the other side may issue proceedings and the claimant costs are likely to be more or, if the case runs to court, could well quadruple – and this may affect future premiums. 

There are around 1,100 whiplash claims alone every day in the UK and some insurers are already talking about significant discounts for fleets that report quickly. 

Streamlining your reporting processes could reduce costs in 2011.

For advice on how your accident management company can assist, contact me at
clive.rolfe@eliteim.co.uk.

Planning ahead. Well it’s great that Silverstone has secured the British Grand Prix – but would you have arranged it to be on the same day as the Cup Final? 

In reality they probably had little choice but getting the best outcome to satisfy wide ranging requirements can only be done by planning well in advance.

Reducing cost, complying with health and safety and duty of care, selecting the best make and model variant to optimise your fleet’s performance are all high on the agenda and are the very stuff of your everyday workload. 

Advice from your accident management company will help with all of these and the data built up by the best service providers will allow you to meet all these objectives. For example, selecting the right vehicles to provide cost-effective transport is aided by the readily-available data such as fuel consumption, servicing costs, expected tyre life etc.

However, manufacturers do not tell you that to repair accident damage to the XYZ model is likely to be far more than the DLT. Information like this will help you maintain or reduce your insurance premiums.

A good accident management company will have been analysing such data and together with the ability to assess your exposure to risk will allow you to plan ahead to the greatest advantage.

Elite Incident Management Ltd wishes you a happy and relaxing Christmas and a successful and prosperous New Year.

Over the last few years we have seen relatively stable repair costs, with only very small annual increases. 

The main downward pressure on costs has been labour, where good engineering has reduced the number of hours required for a repair from 17.5 hours to 16.5 hours, while the main upward pressure has been a rise in paint costs. 

At Elite, we expect to continue to manage labour costs very closely, and this to counteract any upward pressure in paint costs. We therefore expect repair costs to be flat in 2010.
However, there are other pressures that could affect your repairs this year and these make it important to use the right bodyshops for your repairs.

There is a two-tier market developing for repairs. Quality repairers keep abreast of rapidly changing methods of body construction and the special skills and equipment these demand. 

Such repairers can be identified because they have achieved PAS125 BSi Kitemark accreditation or manufacturers’ approval. You are safest using only these repairers.
Secondly, the investment required to repair modern vehicles to the proper standard is such that many repairers who do not have sufficient financial resilience will go out of business in 2010, which is not good if your vehicles happen to be undergoing work at the time.

To have complete confidence, choose an accident management provider such as Elite Incident Management Ltd that has a PAS125 BSi accredited network of repairers and maintains that network to a high standard, ensuring you will not be left in a difficult position if a repairer’s business fails.

Your insurers will no doubt wish to have input into how you handle this and will most likely want to deal with any injury claims themselves and also claims over a certain limit, probably anything over say £10k but it is quite understandable why they would want to be in control of these higher cost cases.

Nonetheless, most claims fall well within the limits they will likely set and so there are some considerable advantages in controlling claims cost for you if you deal efficiently with the remainder. Reducing third party claim cost will reflect in reduced annual premium.

The key to success is to work with an outsource provider that specialises in TP assistance, the ultimate goal being to inform them of incidents as quickly as possible – preferably by your driver reporting the incident to them from the scene and providing contact details for the TP.

Elite provides white-labelled services and operates as an extension of your own company. Experts trained in liability assessment will confirm if your driver is at fault and then immediately attempt to contact the TP in an understanding and sympathetic manner.

TP claimants that are left without assistance very often utilise the services of credit hire and credit repair companies who, by the very nature of extending credit facilities, will cause the cost of the claim to be far higher. If you are paying for this yourself then clearly it hurts.

Remember speed is of the essence in controlling claim cost but it is also important for your company profile to demonstrate that you wish to offer assistance as soon as possible to the person who has suffered a loss through no fault of their own.

There are therefore both financial and commercial benefits.

To be seen as a responsible company providing exemplary services whether in your normal business or when dealing innocent third parties can only be good for your public profile.