Motor insurance offering to assist in accurate vehicle pre-inspections

Lightstone Auto, a provider of comprehensive data, analytics and systems for the insurance, lending and dealership industries, and Custom App, the specialist mobile App development firm, have recently introduced LIVE Inspect, a new addition to the successful LIVE App suite, to assist insurers in accurately understanding vehicles they have added to their books.

 

According to Jasper van Heesch, Head of Business Development at Lightstone Auto, pre-inspections have been used in the South African insurance sector but to different degrees and to varying levels of success. Some insurers reluctantly see it as unnecessary, calculating that the business case does not stack up. The poor or unreliable data received, the costs, delays and/or the effort needed to get a customer’s inspection done, are oftentimes not worth the effort.

 

Other insurers have embraced pre-inspections and multiple channels have been tried and tested. Some with success, but often the expected benefit does not fully materialize. For example, an analysis by Lightstone Auto, found that inspections done for a major insurer were 40% incorrect when it came to make, model and VIN number.

 

This kind of inaccuracy impacts underwriting precision and prevents efficiencies in claims management where insurers are increasingly looking to manage their vehicles through the claims process via the vehicle’s VIN number.

 

"We have developed a new benchmark in pre-inspections solutions which we believe will dramatically improve the derived benefits and will challenge thinking on this topic,” says Graham Harvey, CEO of Custom App.

 

Using a combination of the mobile App, a data management system and a related interface that can be fully integrated into various datasets and insurer management systems, the LIVE Inspect solution allows credible inspections to be done by anyone, at any time. These activities and outputs can easily and immediately be tracked via a dashboard allowing the insurer to see the details of the inspection as soon as it is complete.

 

The mobile App employs elements such as form pre-population and license disc and driver’s license card scanning and decryption. These elements alone significantly improve data capture accuracy as inspectors no longer need to type in any details, in particular the 17 digit VIN number which is notorious for input error.

 

"Furthermore, the data management system integrates with the proprietary auto datasets of Lightstone Auto for each inspection, and as a result can automatically flag to the insurer that the vehicle make, model and/or year on the policy are wrong. This is extremely valuable for underwriting risk and good client management,” says van Heesch.

 

Other notable elements in the App are the ability to take photos and that every key action is time, date and location stamped, thus providing an irrefutable version of the condition of the vehicle at that point.

 

"We are currently building a self-inspect version of LIVE Inspect which insurers can put into the hands of their policy holders. With fraud detection mechanisms like number plate recognition and proximity evaluation, Lightstone Auto is helping insurers make things more convenient for their clients while still retaining the integrity of the solution,” says Harvey.

 

The App is available for free download on Android and IOS and a small fee is charged for each inspection completed. Once the App is downloaded, the logged in user simply moves through an intuitive process to capture all the details required, with minimal manual input.

 

"LIVE Inspect provides an accurate, convenient and real time solution for insurers that challenges old thinking on the benefits versus costs of pre-inspections. This is an exciting development for the industry,” concludes van Heesch.

 

For more information visit http://www.lightstoneauto.co.za/