What is an OEM? [standards]

Solutions to insurer repair procedure severity grief might lie outside of claims

Insurers might be trying to combat claim severity by denying reimbursement for required repair operations, rather than address the problem where it can truly be solved, based on a discussion at the July 15 Collision Industry Conference.

Effectively, insurers are lashing out at consumers and body shops rather than the automakers and actuaries at fault for their predicament.

OE procedures are what’s changed the industry. 

Body shops thought they fixed cars to OEM standards, yet then received a bulletin they hadn’t. Were all those unscanned vehicles to be recalled? The concept caused “consternation” among insurers, who wondered, “‘How can that be?'” 

Suddenly, a midsize insurer has $2.7 million daily average severity which hadn’t been accounted for, which is “really funny to them".

“They push back a little bit,” Perhaps not every car needs a scan and some subjectivity can be introduced.

a “big manufacturer” of a vehicle whose owner’s manual specified replacing seatbelts after any accident. It was an “OE requirement,” but “very seldom” did any shops he knew replace the seatbelts. This was a while ago, according to Wright — perhaps today, with more litigation, repairers would view this instruction differently.

Unfortunately, the need for vehicle diagnostics might have already existed prior to those position statements — it might have just been unrealized by repairers and claims departments until automakers hit the industry over the head with it.

And just because many repairers ignored or overlooked the seat belt instruction didn’t mean they were right to do so.

Tide Pods didn’t always say, ‘do not eat’ on the packaging. It didn’t mean it was right to eat them before that.

In this regard, the severity of surprise these announcements generated or could have generated might reflect a failure to keep up on the part of the underwriters as much as repairers and adjusters. Under “Right to Repair,” all service information available to a dealership was supposed to have been made available to the public dating back to the 2002 model year.