Car insurance cheats will have nowhere to hide when databases are coordinated, brokers said today.
An upcoming government crackdown on uninsured drivers is likely to reduce numbers significantly, the British Insurance Brokers' Association (Biba) claimed today.
The insurance group made the comments after transport minister Jim Fitzpatrick announced a new consultation paper on the subject. The document is to out new ways of dealing with uninsured drivers in the UK, who currently number at least 1.5 million, by harnessing computer technology.
Greater cooperation between different databases containing motorist information is to be implemented when the consultation is complete. It is hoped that this will lead to far fewer car insurance cheats slipping through the net than before.
Graeme Trudgill, BIBA technical and corporate affairs executive, explained: "The Motor Insurance Bureau database is going to be compared with the DVLA registered keeper database. So anyone who has a car, who doesn’t have insurance on the other database, can clearly be identified. So you're going to have probably around one and a half million people fall out into a pool of suspects who don’t have insurance and then after a period of time they will be sent out a letter saying, 'you've got a car but you don’t seem to have insurance , this is an offence, get insurance right now'.
He added: "So they will hopefully get insurance or correct their registration if it was a problem or do a statutory off-road notification saying that the vehicle is off the road and therefore it doesn’t need insurance."
YouGov research revealed last month that British car insurance customers are paying £31 a year extra on their premiums due to uninsured drivers.
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