Better Risk Data, Better Decisions, Better Risk Profile

Once upon a time a fleet never knew why its claims record was poor.  Indeed, some fleets just put it down to bad luck or simply the inevitable downside to being a successful company.

Then, one day, somebody in HR said, ‘shouldn’t we look a bit closer at why these accidents occur and shouldn’t we check out how legal and competent our drivers actually are?’

Somebody else in Health and Safety then went on to say, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could monitor more closely what these drivers are really doing out there on the road?  Then we might be able to help them to avoid putting themselves at risk’.

The fleet manager then said, ‘so who exactly is going to analyse all the information we’re about to gather on all these things and then decide what to do about it?’

‘Well’, said the guys from HR and Health and Safety, ‘You are’.

This analogy is not far from the truth and of course, the entry point to any fleet is still via the fleet manager role even though HR and Health and Safety departments have an input.

 If we skip forward in time to the current day, the fleet manager is confronted by accident data from one supplier, licence check data from another, telematics data from another and a whole myriad of internal influences on how his fleet should be run.

Risk data arrives in different formats, at different times from different sources, which means the first job of consolidating it represents an ongoing technological challenge. The second job of analysing what the data tells the fleet represents a further time-consuming job for the fleet manager.

The third task of deciding what to do with the data requires judgement about the severity of the non-compliant data.  It also requires the setting of thresholds of acceptable risk and the knowledge of the available tools to remedy the risks that have exceeded those thresholds.

The fourth task is to put the remedies in place, which may need authority to invest from the Board.  It also needs somebody to co-ordinate the delivery of the remedy with the driver.

The fifth task is to measure the effectiveness of the chosen remedies to see whether the overall risk profile of the fleet has been improved.  This is not just a case of looking at the claims experience. It requires work with drivers to assess whether driving safety culture has changed within the fleet.

At the end of the day, with all the other responsibilities being carried by the fleet manager, it’s a fair bet to say these five tasks will, at best, be sporadic, which means something will be missed and that something may represent a major influencer of overall risk.  So, for this reason, fleets usually need external help from a risk management provider who specialises in consolidation and analysis of data.

RVM assists in this space and can be contacted on the number below if you’d like details of how we help our clients with these five risk-based tasks.

0113 224 8800

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WHAT LINKS ACCIDENTS WITH RISK MANAGEMENT?

It is mostly the case that fleets buy risk management as a separate service to accident management.  In fact most fleets still use the insurer helpline for managing claims.  This way of doing things is due partly to tradition and partly because very few risk management providers are set up to provide an integrated claims service into what they do

In reality, accidents have everything to do with risk management.  They often demonstrate a lack of a safety culture, they offer clues as to how to reduce risk and they also demonstrate whether any risk initiatives are working or not.  However, despite this, claim statistics are normally only considered once a year around the renewal date of the fleet policy.  

If claims are only viewed once a year then fleets are likely to miss improvement opportunities by linking them, as they occur, with other gathered risk management data in order to arrive at an accurate overall risk profile of each driver.  So let us look at some of these potential links between risk management and the occurrence of motor fleet accidents:

LEGAL SAFETY LINK - The government provides some of the rules for legal compliance that are designed to reduce accident frequency such as the need to have safety policies in place and under what circumstances fleets and individuals can be legally liable for non-compliance.  Best practice dictates that fleets need to comply and this means looking proactively at how best to avoid accidents in the future.

DATA LINK - Accident data accumulates on an ongoing basis so the same constant approach should be applied for any risk management initiatives.  Regular reviews of management information should reveal how claims are influencing risk and perhaps more importantly, how and whether risk initiatives are reducing claims.  This data link is essential if the aim of the fleet is to reduce insurance and claim cost.

 

TELEMATICS LINK - Telematics systems that constantly monitor driving behaviour can often ‘predict’ which drivers are most likely to have an accident and some will issue an alert for impacts that exceed a pre-agreed G-force that may indicate an accident has occurred.  Additionally, the technology can often confirm the liability position in a claim by providing visual evidence.

 

INSURANCE LINK - The calculation of the fleet insurance premium is arrived at from looking at many angles including historic claims performance and current/future risk management initiatives chosen by the policy-holding fleet.  So from an insurance point of view the two services are intrinsically linked.

CAUSATION LINK - Another key link is the opportunity to gather more information about causation factors through the claims notification process.  Learning more about why an accident occurred allows a much more prescriptive approach to designing course material for driver training, which in turn would make such training far more effective.

 

CONSTRAINTS ON LINKS

Having established there are several links between claims and risk management, let us now examine what would be needed to make those links function: 

 

TECHNICAL SKILLS - First of all, claims always occur historically but risk has a constant eye on the future.  This means somebody needs to look at what has happened in order to plan what should happen from that point.  This link has technical implications for systems, skills and experience.

OPERATIONAL SKILLS - Secondly, unless considerable training is put in place, the intricacies of dealing with a complex claim requires very different skills to those required to interpret a telematics data stream or indeed to decide on what would be the appropriate remedial action for a driver with varying risk results from claims, telematics and licence check data.

SYSTEMS - The software requirements to manage claims are different to those required to deliver a multi-dimensional risk management solution.  The system would not only have to relate dynamic data to both the driver and the vehicle but also need to have embedded coding designed to identify high risk data from different angles.

All these practicalities might explain why it is rare to find a fleet risk management provider who can truly integrate their services with the requirements of a full accident management service, although there are some in the UK.  The advantages of linking accident management with a risk reduction program as a truly consolidated and single solution are considerable for all the reasons listed here.


At RVM our integrated approach allows us to help fleets to implement effective safety policies, analyse trends and identify high risk drivers. Our Driver Training program is targeted, timely and appropriate. The result is lower accident rates, improved driver safety, and reduced costs. Contact us on 01132248800 to find out more.

 

Who decides when and why a fleet driver becomes ‘high risk’?”

Many fleet managers have a gut feeling about who their worst drivers are but in truth, the reasoning behind that feeling can often be subjective and anecdotal, sometimes it is arrived at through personal experience but rarely is it based on incontrovertible empirical risk management evidence? 

The reason is because it is actually quite difficult to ensure that the correct drivers are selected for the correct reasons and that the correct remedial action is applied because in all organisations there are forces in play that can often prevent accuracy and fair play. 

So, the questions to ask in order to get this right should include: 

• Who’s doing the measuring of driver risk or is it system driven?
• What set of measures are being used?
• Are the measures of risk consistently applied?
• Who judges the severity of the discovered risk?
• How often is the measuring of risk carried out?
• How accurate are the results?
• What external influences are applied to the results?
• Who decides (and how quickly) what to do about the results?
• Who measures the success of any remedial action taken?

In addition to these questions, a fleet must rely on the broadest set of measures before investing in driver training because multi-source inputs to decision-making will demonstrate patterns, confirm or deny any subjective thoughts and remove any objections from the driver.

Please contact us now if you’d like to know more about how best to identify and reduce high risk driving.

At RVM our integrated approach allows us to help fleets to implement effective safety policies, analyse trends and identify high risk drivers. Our Driver Training program is targeted, timely and appropriate. The result is lower accident rates, improved driver safety, and reduced costs

What's the point of Telematics if you don't use it?

The majority of fleets now use one of the seemingly numerous telematics solutions available in the UK.  These systems use a combination of technologies to monitor other road users, location, speed, driving behaviour, fuel usage, idling time and several other important aspects of driver and vehicle performance. 

Apart from the most obvious advantages these systems offer such as tracking and speeding, there are a number of lesser-known applications for the technology that would create even more savings and safety if the available data stream from ‘black-box technology’ were only managed properly. 

Notwithstanding these other benefits, it is incredible how many fleets we encounter who go to the effort of identifying a need for telematics, trawling the market for a suitable system, obtaining Board approval for the investment, implementing the fitting of units over many weeks and then, unbelievably, failing to act on alerts issued by the system and never even looking at the provided online Portal. 

This raises a number of important questions:

• Are some telematics systems being bought simply to tick a few legal compliance boxes
• Do fleets fail to allocate the job of managing the telematics data feed to somebody knowledgeable and with time available
• Does the allocated person with responsibility for managing the data have no authority to act upon it?
• Has the accumulated data proved to be difficult to access or indeed to be unreliable?

As telematics providers don’t offer the management service, it seems the main responsibility for interpreting and acting upon data produced by black-box technologies lies with the end-user fleets unless the fleet chooses to outsource that responsibility to a fleet risk management company that includes such a service within its range of products. 

The job of work to manage the data stream can vary hugely according to the quality of the output offered by the various telematics systems and therefore a fleet should consider this aspect of the system they choose.  In fact it may pay dividends to involve the risk management provider in the process of procuring the best system. 

So what’s at stake here? In a nutshell, those fleets that fail to use their telematics data stream properly may lose the opportunity to reduce claim frequency, may fail to evidence liability positions in loss recovery and third party claim situations, may lose the chance to reduce expensive insurance premiums, may threaten brand reputation and may also miss the chance to improve the safety and productivity of their drivers. 

RVM Assist is based in Leeds, West Yorkshire and has been successfully analysing telematics data stream for its fleet clients for the last 5 years.  It is one of the UK’s longest standing full service providers of consolidated fleet risk and accident management services. For more information, visit www.rvmassist.co.uk or call us on 01132248800.

At RVM our integrated approach allows us to help fleets to implement effective safety policies, analyse trends and identify high risk drivers. Our Driver Training program is targeted, timely and appropriate. The result is lower accident rates, improved driver safety, and reduced costs

Other than legal compliance, what else should outsourced fleet risk management do for you?”

This question goes to the heart of what fleet risk management is really about. 

In addition to satisfying your duty of care, many fleets buy fleet risk management to reduce insurance costs, others feel strongly about protecting the company brand and still others simply wish to increase safety for drivers and the public at large. 

So let us look at how these extra motivations behind fleet risk programs actually benefits end-user fleets:

• Supply chain simplicity - any well-constructed outsourced fleet risk management program should smooth out the supply chain by offering only one solution that assesses and resolves all possible areas of driving-risk  for a fleet.   

• Ease of operation – a single supply arrangement means the fleet only has one contact, one set of reports, one cost, one review meeting and one contract to deal with and that saves time and money  

• Time-savings internally - this consolidated risk solution saves time and money for fleets by avoiding manual processing and maintaining spreadsheets.  For example, manual check licences and manual consolidation of different risk metrics.  

• Internal expertise - Fleets can also avoid the need for specialist software and suppliers as well as the need to employ internal risk expertise.  In-house risk management may be self-defeating if the wrong conclusions are drawn from the data.

• A view of the future – An insurance premium is determined by historic information so to control the future, Fleets need to be able to predict which drivers are the most likely to have accidents and why.  Armed with that data, action can then be taken to offset much of that risk.
   
  If you are interested in an outsourced solution that provides all of the above benefits, call us now on 01132248800 or e-mail us at info@rvmassist.co.uk
   
  At RVM our integrated approach allows us to help fleets to implement effective safety policies, analyse trends and identify high risk drivers. Our Driver Training program is targeted, timely and appropriate. The result is lower accident rates, improved driver safety, and reduced costs

“Driver Licence Checks – just a compliance issue or actually much more than that?”

Clearly, it is important to make sure that your main fleet and grey fleet drivers are legally allowed to drive.  That much is obvious and demonstrated by the fact that most fleets now have a formal checking procedure in place.   

However, a licence check result can do much more than perform a simple compliance test.  Indeed, the results can be more meaningful when set alongside the results of other types of driver metrics such as a claims history, online driver assessments or indeed the most recent telematics data feed. 

Consider for a moment that a licence check can represent confirmation or denial of discovered driving habits, it can reinforce decisions about types of remedial action as well as prompt training needs such as speed awareness, mobile phone policy or familiarity with UK road signs. 

Ultimately, a licence check result may also uncover high risk endorsements that link with driver attitude and which may prompt the creation of a specific in-vehicle training course that contains material designed to address that particular type of risk. 

If a fleet uses licence check results in isolation then important improvement opportunities may be missed.  That means any remedial action taken (in good faith) may contain the wrong messages given to the wrong drivers, which will have no impact on reducing insurance costs or claim frequency.

Therefore if you would like more information on how to enhance your Licence Checking data, call us now on 01132248800 or e-mail us at info@rvmassist.co.uk

At RVM our integrated approach allows us to help fleets to implement effective safety policies, analyse trends and identify high risk drivers. Our Driver Training program is targeted, timely and appropriate. The result is lower accident rates, improved driver safety, and reduced costs


 

Why is average repair cost so important?

Typically, 20% of Fleet drivers will be involved in a road traffic accident every year.  The knock-on effect of these incidents involves a lot of time and money for drivers, fleet managers, insurers and other people linked to the event.

Usually the largest element of cost is the damage repair itself and this is the first reason why Average Repair Cost should be an important focus for the policyholder.

Incredibly, for normal fleet cars and vans, the Average Repair Cost can be as high as £1,500 or as low as £800 according to a number of interesting factors:

1. Who is responsible for estimating the damage?
2. Who checks how the estimate was prepared?
3. Who is ultimately responsible for paying the bill?
4. How is Average Repair Cost calculated?
5. What repair method is being used?
6. What quality of repair is required?
7. Whose repair network is involved?
8. What terms are in place with the repairers?
9. Does the final invoice match the estimated cost?

Insurers calculate fleet premiums based on what they have to pay out plus what it costs them to manage the claims so Average Repair Cost is intrinsically linked to fleet insurance costs.

So, if your average repair cost is towards the top of the scale, you may wish to ask yourself why that is the case and what can be done to lower it.  The answers may be surprising to you.

If you don’t know your average repair cost and realise that you should know, why not bring in RVM Assist for a free analysis of your last 12 months claims on a confidential basis?

You can find us at www.rvmassist.co.uk or call us on 0113 224 8800 and ask for Angela or Diana.

At RVM our integrated approach allows us to help fleets to implement effective safety policies, analyse trends and identify high risk drivers. Our Driver Training program is targeted, timely and appropriate. The result is lower accident rates, improved driver safety, and reduced costs