IAG’s NSW subsidiary, NRMA Insurance looks like it will have to dump
its web based repair system (WRM). Under WRM, repairers tender for
insurance jobs based on website photographs and descriptions of damaged
vehicles. NRMA then directs the work to the successful tenderer.

The Parliamentary Staysafe Committee yesterday handed down a damning report
into the repair system less than a week after an independent inquiry
commissioned by NSW Fair Trading Minister, Dianne Beamer, also gave it
a bucketing.

You don’t need to read far down the list of 44 recommendations in the
Staysafe report to realise that it’s back to the drawing board for NRMA
Insurance:

Recommendation one: Insurance Australia Group (NRMA
Insurance) suspend web-based repair management, as a component of the
Care and Repair Centre system of allocating damaged motor vehicles to
motor vehicle smash repairers without the repairers physically
inspecting the damaged vehicle before quoting for work, as it is an
unsafe system in its current form and operation…

Tony Stewart, Labor MP for Bankstown who along with Lane Cove Liberal
MP Anthony Roberts, pushed for the parliamentary inquiry, is now
expected to seek support from his Labor colleagues on “anti-steering”
legislation to stop NRMA directing work to preferred suppliers.

Stewart first called for this measure in August, adding it had already
existed in over 30 States in the USA. Today he said the NRMA and IAG
Insurance would have to take a “good look in the mirror” and “a reality
check” about what the industry and public thought about their “Care and
Repair” scheme.

CEO of the NSW Motor Traders’ Association, James McCall told Crikey the
report strongly backed everything it had said all along about WRM.
“Let’s hope lives don’t have to be injuries sustained before NRMA
insurance recognises its responsibilities and acts on the
recommendations of this committee,” he said.