Why has additional investment been set aside for enforcement?
Our mission is to make roads safer by getting uninsured and hit-and-run drivers off our roads. And until that's accomplished, we're here to compensate victims quickly, fairly and compassionately.
We know that any activity in the enforcement space cannot stand still, and we recognise that advancing technologies and data capabilities, along with changing trends around uninsured driving, mean we're now at a point where we need to reshape and expand our initiatives.
MIB is in a unique position, holding huge amounts of data on those choosing to drive uninsured. By utilising these data insights, we will be shaping our efforts to get ahead of the issue.
What has happened so far?
Martin Saunders joined as programme lead
Martin's career has spanned several high-level positions across the general insurance industry, focusing on claims across the UK and worldwide. He was previously a member of the IFB (Insurance Fraud Bureau) Board and was appointed to the Civil Justice Committee to represent the insurance industry.
Since joining MIB in 2017, Martin has held several roles, including overseeing the initial stages of our claims change programme before leading OIC (Official Injury Claim), which was launched following the Whiplash Reforms - where he navigated the build, launch and alignment of the service in partnership with the Ministry of Justice. He will use his expertise and connections across the industry to evolve existing initiatives and develop new ideas to reduce uninsured driving.
Martin says: "I'm very excited and very proud to have been asked to take on this responsibility. Uninsured driving and its consequences are a menace that we need to eradicate. We need to do that in a way that balances education and helping people who have made a genuine mistake with doing even more to assist the police in removing uninsured vehicles from the roads."
We've updated our existing initiatives and implemented new ones
- Operation Scalis: We piloted the allocation of dedicated resourcing with West Midlands Police. Officers were able to focus solely on tackling uninsured driving in key hotspots across the region. Between February and June, 22 days of operations resulted in over 140 vehicle seizures. The programme will now see secondary pilots undertaken across another three forces.
- Operation M4: We created the first multi-force, one-day operation along a major UK road network to dedicate resourcing and focus on uninsured driving. Five forces along the M4 corridor collaborated to identify uninsured vehicles as they entered and exited the network, including sharing intelligence across force borders. This resulted in 109 stops, 51 seizures, and 7 prosecutions for other offences. This multi-force approach will be replicated along other major roadways in the coming months.
- M4 advertising campaign: To extend the impact of Operation M4, we are running an out-of-home advertising campaign along the M4 corridor. This includes adverts on the famous M4 Torch, static billboards, service station washroom posters, petrol station digital screens and fuel pump covers. The campaign aims to raise awareness and drive behaviour change, leading to prevention of uninsured driving.
- Updates to CIE: in this first phase, we have already started to polish our CIE (Continuous Insurance Enforcement) programme. This allows us to contact the registered keepers of vehicles that have been identified as uninsured by matching data on Navigate, the new home of MIB's data services, against DVLA data. This reduces exposure by an average of 17 days for each vehicle.
- Data Capability development: We are investing in our ability to utilise data insights to enable better informed decisions across both prevention and enforcement initiatives. We are combining data from across different enforcement initiatives in a way we have never done before, to speed up delivery and improve predictions of behaviour and collision instances.
- Police training: We have overhauled our police training, allowing us to provide road policing officers and other policing areas with the information they need to support the fight against uninsured drivers.
What's still to come?
We are exploring numerous avenues for further initiatives, which we will be sharing with you soon.
Some of the areas you will hear more about include:
- Predictive Movements: Following the successful pilot of usitilising predictive analytics to identify the movements of uninsured vehicles, software has been developed to automate the process. This will enable police forces to narrow down a vehicle's potential location to a 15-minute window, therefore increasing the accuracy, speed and outcomes of enforcement activities.
- Current initiative alignment: Using advanced data insights, we look to increase the alignment of the CIE and Operation Tutelage end-to-end processes, removing duplication of data, which will allow us to:
- Reduce the initial timeframe for communicating with identified registered keepers.
- Automate the process where possible.
- Make data-driven decisions through the improved quality and timeliness of data.
- Strategic Partnerships: We are currently engaged in proactive engagement with several organisations across various industries, with the aim of implementing additional initiatives to reduce uninsured driving.
Get involved
We've always believed multiple brains are always better than one, and that different perspectives are vital to our work to tackling uninsured driving. So, if you have any ideas, insight, or questions that can support our mutual goal of reducing uninsured driving, we would love to hear from you.
