An accident management product which claims to reduce costs and vehicle off-road time by replacing the need to manage multiple suppliers with one point of contact has been launched.
TTS360 is a joint venture between incident management company Active Fleet Solutions and national law firm Irwin Mitchell, and provides packages for brokers, fleet operators, insurers and manufacturers.
The services it offers include an in-house round-the-clock first notification of loss (FNOL) call centre, provision of temporary replacement vehicles, vehicle recovery, fleet damage repair and claims management, claims handling and commercial fleet claims, and recovery and injury claims.
Matt Currie, a partner at Irwin Mitchell, said: “TTS360’s services can be tailored to a fleet’s specific needs and are designed to remove complex processes and reduce the overall cost of claims. This service reduces the administrative burden for businesses.
“We will be working with our clients to establish a bespoke model service allowing them to receive either a full set of incident management services or just the specific elements businesses need to enhance their operational efficiency, shorten the recovery cycle and control their costs.”
The system can be built to work with a fleet’s existing preferred suppliers if required.
FNOL critical to reducing costs and downtime
Dean Mugglestone, commercial director of TTS360, said the way in which the company deals with FNOL calls is critical to reducing costs and downtime. All FNOL calls are recorded and answered by trained call handlers, who enter all information into the company’s Activenet incident management system. This allows customers to have full visibility of their claim files at any time through a web-based portal.
“As an example, if a van driver has an incident on his way to making an urgent delivery, usually an accident management company will focus on the driver and his vehicle, while any third-party damage is not the primary focus,” said Mugglestone. “We will look after both.
“We speak to the third party as part of the FNOL if they are available at that time, or otherwise within 30 minutes of the call. We will offer to look after all elements of the third-party claim before they contact their insurance company.”
This includes repairs and temporary replacement vehicles and Mugglestone added that this approach reduces costs by minimising the risk of claims inflation.
However, other insurers and accident management companies do also seek to control third-party costs at the point of notification to minimise claims costs.
Mugglestone, though, believes TTS360’s services go a step further.
“At the point of FNOL, if our call handlers identify a need for assistance with personal injury, we can give advice and, where requested, we can offer the assistance of Irwin Mitchell’s motor team,” he said.
“Our call handlers are also trained to identify high level fraud indicators and where concerns are raised, the claim will be further investigated by our dedicated fraud unit.”
TTS360 also provides roadside assistance under its first notice of event (FNOE) service.
Service level agreements ensure transparency from repairers
The first notification of loss (FNOL) process also ensures vehicles are taken to one of the garages in TTS360’s approved nationwide repair network to ensure that no time or money is spent transporting them to the right locations later.
Dean Mugglestone said all of TTS360’s repairers adhere to its standard operating procedures and sign a supplier service level agreement (SLA) to ensure transparency.
This details pre-agreed labour rates based on the vehicle types, parts and paints discounts, estimating procedures, impressed stock agreements to assist with vehicle downtime and out-of-hours and weekend working agreements.
“Many companies focus on the headline labour rate as the only way to control costs, but if you pay a cheaper rate but the repair takes longer, then the costs could be higher,” said Mugglestone.
“We think the labour rate should always be managed closely to ensure that other costs within the estimate are also calculated at a reasonable rate.”
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