Fix auto claim online soon

Insurance | admin | March 20, 2011 at 9:33 am

Need to file an insurance claim for your car? Thanks to an interesting new technology you longer have to wait for the insurance surveyor to take a look at the car or the workshop/ dealership to give a good rate on the parts that need to be replaced.

Former Maruti boss Jagdish Khattar-promoted Carnation has adopted a new software from British firm Audatex that enables the car service firm to conduct the entire process of evaluating the damage, filing the claim and getting the nod from the insurer, online.

Carnation, which has tied up a licence agreement with Audatex, is piloting the new software which started last week with a cross-section of insurers. "Already names like Bajaj Allianz, Bharti-AXA, ICICI Lombard and Iffco-Tokio have agreed to work on the Audatex software," says Khattar, CEO of Carnation, a multi-brand automobile service company. Carnation has started working on actual claims with Bajaj Allianz and talks are also on to get the public sector insurers on board.

What the Audatex technology does for the consumer is offer a standardised rate for parts and labour costs. Carnation, which works on a hub-and-spoke model, wanted a technology that would not only take away the local discretion both at the workshop end as well as at the surveyor end out of the system but also allow for the central monitoring of all claims.

"This technology makes the whole process transparent by taking away the powers of dealers and surveyors to charge according to their discretion," says Khattar. It will also reduce losses of insurance companies, he says, by cutting transaction costs involved in paying the surveyor, follow up, approval movement and administrative overheads. Typically, the transaction cost per claim that an insurance company tots up currently is around Rs 1300-1500.

So how does Audatex work? If your car has had an accident or a dent which needs fixing, you take it to the workshop. The workshop body manager takes detailed pictures of the car and immediately posts them online. The insurer's surveyor, instead of hoofing it to the workshop, checks the pictures and gives his verdict online. Once the surveyor and the workshop identify the items, the rates pop up on the claim screen including the labour charges involved. These are rates are uniform across the country.

Once the claim is filed, the insurer also gives online approval and the car goes into the workbay for repairs.

Source: Economic Times