In October 2023, we announced a £5 million investment to increase our work to get uninsured drivers off the roads sooner and make roads safer. Now, we’re ready to introduce the programme lead who will be turning this investment into new initiatives, groundbreaking data insights and innovative partnerships.

Martin Saunders’ career has seen him cover several high-level positions across the General Insurance Industry, focusing on claims across the UK and worldwide. He has previously sat on the IFB (Insurance Fraud Bureau) board, and appointed to the Civil Justice Committee to represent the insurance industry.

Since joining MIB in 2017, Martin has held a number of roles within the organisation. He oversaw the initial stages of the claim change programme, before moving to head up the OIC (Official Injury Claim) - put in place following the Whiplash Reforms - where he navigated the build, launch and alignment of the service.

Following the investment announcement, Martin has taken on the additional responsibility to lead the enforcement programme. He will utilise his expertise and connections across the industry to evolve existing initiatives and develop a diverse range of new initiatives in support of reducing uninsured driving across the UK.

Martin said "I’m very excited and very proud to have been asked to take on this responsibility. Uninsured driving and it’s consequences are a menace that we need to eradicate, but we need to do that in a way that balances education, helps people who have just got life admin out of sync and, where needed, assist the police to do their work and to ultimately remove, seize and destroy vehicles.”

Why has additional investment been set aside for enforcement activities?

MIBs remit has always been clear:

• We make roads safer by getting uninsured and hit-and-run drivers off our roads.
• Until that’s accomplished, we’re here to compensate victims quickly, fairly and compassionately.

Providing robust enforcement initiatives directly aligns to the first part of our mission, so ensuring that our enforcement activity remains relevant to current requirements is always at the forefront of MIB priorities. We know that any activity in the enforcement space cannot stand still for too long and so we recognise that advancing technology and data capabilities, along with changing trends of those choosing to drive uninsured, mean we’re now at a point where we need and are able to interrogate and re-shape our initiatives.

MIB are in a unique position in holding huge amounts of data on those choosing to drive uninsured. By utilising these data insights, we will be shaping our efforts in order to get in front of the issue.

What has happened in the enforcement programme so far?

• Operation Scalis: We are piloting the allocation of dedicated resourcing with West Midlands Police. Officers will be able to solely focus on tackling uninsured driving in key hotspots across the region, with 22 days of operations spread across February – May.

• CIE Update Phase 1: We have already started to polish our CIE (Continuous Insurance Enforcement) programme, allowing us to contact the registered keepers of vehicles that have been identified through the MID x DVLA data match more quickly, reducing 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 materials, 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 to build a new suite of initiatives, which we will share more details about as they come to fruition. Some areas you will hear more about over the next few months include:

• Predictive Movements: Following the successful pilot of utilising 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. Go Live is expected Q3 2024 - we will include more details in a future Enforce update.

• Current initiative alignment: Using advanced data insights, we look to increase the alignment of the CIE and Operation Tutelage E2E 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 in a period of proactive engagement with a number of different organisations, across a variety of industries, with the aim of implementing additional initiatives to help us reduce uninsured driving.

Get involved

Whilst we are exploring a large number of initiative channels, we believe that multiple brains are always better than one. We know that different perspectives can add value 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.