To aid motor insurers in identifying insurance cancellations or coverage gaps during the national COVID-19 lockdowns, LexisNexis Risk Solutions is providing a free, optional enhancement for its risk assessment tool.
LexisNexis’s Policy Insights tool now has data attributes on motor insurance cancellations and coverage gaps during the lockdown periods. The new data will help ensure that those insurance customers who chose to cancel their motor coverage or allowed their insurance to lapse during the restricted period are priced more fairly when they next shop for insurance, renew their policy, or make a mid-term adjustment.
“There are many factors at play that insurance providers will want to be sensitive to – a fall in household incomes, reluctance to use public transport, working from home, and further local lockdowns, as opposed to lack of responsibility in paying bills and generally risky behaviour. Creating these new COVID-19 attributes has therefore been a key priority to give motor insurance providers valuable context for policy gaps or cancellations,” said LexisNexis Risk Solutions senior director of product management James Burton.
Burton added that the new data attributes will help insurers “easily and clearly define lockdown-led decisions by policyholders” to support fair pricing when those customers next apply for insurance.
While the pandemic led to a global reduction in insurance claims, the number of fraudulent motor claims surged by 50% in 2020 compared to 2019, Burton noted.
“This further demonstrates the importance of insurers having information about cancellations and gap in cover at a granular level in order to conduct their own investigations and price accurately,” he said.
