Accident Costs
Costs associated with fleets using an accident management company can be more than offset by savings, according to Tim Rankin, managing director of WNS Assistance.
“A lot of companies call themselves accident management providers, but they simply repair vehicles and manage incidents. Fleet managers should work with third party providers to reduce overall risks and use insightful information provided to manage vehicles and drivers. There is a whole raft of information available through management reports and smart technology to enable costs and vehicle downtime to be reduced,” Rankin says.
Drilling down into data provided by leading accident management companies should, for example, highlight drivers who are frequently having crashes thus enabling targeted training to be introduced, replacement car hire to be more effectively managed and vehicle downtime to
be reduced.
Swiftly notifying an accident management company of a crash is also key as, warns WNS Assistance, claims relating to injuries, vehicles and third parties will worsen if delays in the process mount. The company calculates that involving an accident management company can typically reduce repair bills by about 30%.
Rankin says: “Fleet insurance premiums are calculated on the previous 12 months’ claims record so having comprehensive data available helps in negotiations. Additionally, with rising insurance premiums there is a growing trend for larger fleets to self-insure and for other fleets to save money by carrying a greater excess themselves.
“That can deliver a cheaper annual premium,” he adds. “But it is crucial that fleet managers focus on accident repair costs and drivers’ accident frequency otherwise costs can quickly escalate above what the annual insurance premium would have been.”
He also advocates measuring vehicle repair costs by vehicle type and manufacturer and building that data into wholelife costs to give a more accurate analysis of operating costs. The raft of data captured is almost endless and also includes statistics relating to uninsured losses, third party and non-fault claims and cause of incidents.
Whether a fleet is managing its accidents in-house or outsourcing them to a third party there are a number of KPIs that should be recorded, according to Penny Stoolman, managing director of Total Accident Management. They are:
- Repair cost on individual jobs and average costs across the fleet
- Vehicle off-road time when a hire vehicle is needed
- Individual and average cost of hire vehicles
- Number and type of incidents
- Flagging up which drivers are having accidents and why
- Analysis of incidents caused by drivers or those by a third party
- Number of jobs that need to go to a bodyshop and number that can be repaired in situ via smart repairs or minor paintwork repairs
Other useful information that needs recording should include date and signature certificate of the repair to give proof that it has been independently signed off to meet duty -of-care requirements and, if the vehicle is on contract hire, receipt of the repair guarantee for use when the car or van is returned to the leasing company
Rankin says: “Information is plentiful to improve a fleet’s risk profile and we work with fleet managers to help them reduce costs by giving them meaningful data that
will influence vehicle choice and where driving training is a priority.
“The information that we capture from our customer base enables individual fleets to benchmark themselves against their peers.”
Accident management is about understanding risk and understanding insurance premiums. By using information from suppliers, fleets can compare themselves with other organisations and eliminate costs going forward and reduce risk.
Rankin adds: “The cheapest price used to win the day. But now best practice is focused on total repair costs – not just labour rates and parts pricing – but including items such as replacement hire costs. Off-road time is key along with looking tactically at the use of smart repairs.”
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