When it comes to controlling and minimising costs after an incident involving a third party, timing and the data information obtained are key.
By failing to capture third party information this could inflate incident costs by immensely allowing a £1,000 bill to escalate into the tens of thousands.
Key to keeping these costs as low as possible is making the first notification of loss (FNOL) as soon after the incident as possible where telematics has a key role in alerting the necessary people and providing valuable data of what has occurred.
It historically has been the culture to report a claim within a 24-hour window, but nowadays if this information is not obtained with a few hours the chances of getting this information begins to become increasingly difficult.
With FNOL alerts giving a claims teams a head start to make the initial contact to the individual and obtain vital third party information, means that the ability to control the situation is greatly improved providing a better service all round.
What a driver needs to do in these situations is to follow the companies “what to do when involved in an incident” guidelines that have been set up with the company.
In the event of an incident, it isn’t uncommon for the driver to panic and forget to ask all the questions required.
We have created a free to download “Incident pack /Bump card” Click here to download your free incident report pack which gives the driver guidelines that he needs to complete following an incident. And place them in every vehicle. making sure that they have all the relevant details from the third party.
A great way to make this culture, is for whoever is reasonable for these drivers, whether it be the fleet manager, operations director or the HR department to give regular talks about why it is so important to report an incident asap.
A worst case scenario would be if the team have had no indication that an incident has taken place and therefore no attempt have been made to control the situation. When a team are hindered here and are slow off the starting blocks it has a knock of effect for the entire claims process and increases the chances for increased costs such as injury claims and even fraud.
This is where your telematics play a vital role by alerting you as a soon as an incident has taken place, providing hard evidence in the case of a disputed insurance claim, and with the integration of newer technologies such as 3G cameras the claims process in its entirety can be sped up whist ruling out bogus claims, however drivers should not purely rely on technology and should follow standard guidelines of completing a written report as extra evidence.
