A new online motor vehicle history and valuation service was launched in Jamaica earlier this week and has already signed a deal with the largest car insurer in Jamaica, Advantage General Insurance Company.

Auto Data Jamaica, a subsidiary of Auto Data International Corporation headquartered in Belize, is said to be the first company of its kind in this region.

The company’s business lines — E-History, E-Value and InstaVIN — will now be utilised by Advantage General in all its offices across Jamaica.

Randolph Cheeks Jnr serves as managing director and CEO.

Earlier this week, Auto Data explained and demonstrated how E-History will work and what benefits can be gained for both car owners and insurers.

E-History provides a cost-effective solution to determining the fitness and all-round state of any motor vehicle. It is Jamaica’s equivalent to the United States online vehicle history service known as CARFAX. E-History compiles its data from the consolidated databases of Jamaica’s leading motor valuators, assessors and vehicle mechanics. Its platform can boast of having access to over one million records covering up to 90 per cent of the vehicles in Jamaica, including those imported from the United States.

How Auto Data works

E-History:

For years, obtaining pertinent history of any motor vehicle in Jamaica has been an obtuse endeavour with many purchasers unaware of the true state and background of what they are about to or have acquired.

Auto Data ensures that upon submitting a vehicle’s chassis number through the E-History search interface, the user is instantly provided with a report of the vehicle’s history, including details of previously damaged and replaced parts, running mileage records, dates of inspection, condition of the unit, discrepancies in the year of manufacture and registration, as well as evidence of tampered chassis numbers or other indications of theft.

E-Value:

In addition, gaining a true picture of a vehicle’s valuation tends to be a hit-and-miss affair with many assessors taking an arbitrary approach. More often than not, a man with a clip board goes around the car and conducts a full assessment within 10 minutes, if that long.

Auto Data says it will change all that. The E-Value service gives users an electronic estimate of a vehicle’s current market value. By inputting a vehicle’s details into the E-Value search interface, the user is instantly provided with an estimate of the vehicle’s value as at the date of the search. The values are monitored and managed for accuracy on a daily basis by vehicle assessment and valuation experts David McKay of MSC McKay Jamaica Limited and David Mendez of Mendez Livingstone Inc Limited.

McKay explained that the values generated by the system are based on recent professional valuations of similar vehicles and also take account of relevant domestic and international variables.

InstaVIN:

If one should need to do a background check on a vehicle that came in from the United States, then InstaVIN is the answer. Here Auto Data users can verify the history and background of vehicles from the United States, using the InstaVIN search service accessible from Auto Data Jamaica’s website — www.autodatajamaica.com. Through a partnership with the United States Government, InstaVIN’s databases contain over 30 million junk, salvage and insurance total loss records. The service provides more detail than a CARFAX report for half the price, retailing at US$6.50. MobileTrac, which owns the InstaVIN service and brand, has partnered with Auto Data to distribute the service in this region.

So what will Auto Data bring to the local insurance sector?

President and CEO of Advantage General Mark Thompson, speaking from his company’s Trafalgar Road headquarters, said: “This is the first stage of us as insurers getting data, consolidating it and making it readily accessible. One of the challenges we have as individuals as well as organisations is getting good third-party data, be it a personal decision to acquire an asset or be it a decision to underwrite an asset. From the point of view of assessing a claim, the information provided by Auto Data is extremely beneficial in helping insurers go about their work.”

Thompson pointed out that in many instances two parties get into an accident and settle it among themselves and this goes by largely unreported. Auto Data can now address that situation. Insurers now have a repository of information that they can now readily access.

“In Jamaica we need to get to a point where all the major stakeholders — be it the Government, the police, loss adjusters, insurers whoever it is making decisions around our assets — need to have that increased connectivity and ultimately it allows for much better efficiency,” added Thompson.

As the country’s leading car insurer, does he see others following his lead?

“I definitely do,” he said. “All the other insurers have the same concern in regard to the ability to assess risk. While we are in the business of making money we are also cognisant of not exposing our clients to continually increasing costs. Therefore where we can identify those problematic risks, the ability to remove that from our portfolio allows us to pass on some of those savings to our clients. We are all trying to strike that balance that says we have to be financially prudent, but at the same time we want to make sure our services are economical.”

Benefits to car dealers

Cheeks Jnr, who also is a technology lawyer with extensive international software consultancy experience, said the company saw an opportunity to develop a web-based platform for the aggregation, digitisation and distribution of relevant data. The sector targeted with this particular initiative is the motor vehicle industry.

“There is a huge degree of disconnectivity which operates to the detriment of all stakeholders involved here,” he said. “What this system does is aggregate data from the various participants in the sector (repairers, valuators, assessors, sales teams, insurers, etc). Valuable information that is relevant to that particular vehicle’s risk and value is being created on a daily basis. That information today is disconnected and the industry is not getting the benefit of a comprehensive assessment of that relevant information when looking at these particular assets.

“What we have done is identified the key players, aggregated their information, digitised it and used an offshore technology distribution team to write scripts that will enable immediate online searching and reporting of that information. The E-Value is a market research tool. It is continually updated and gives real-time value information which is delivered to insurers’ fingertips. We are in discussions with a number of leading car dealers (data providers) to provide our E-History service. They can now incorporate their data into our system, thus creating the commercialisation of data which, at this moment, is not taking place in Jamaica and the Caribbean. It also acts as a centralised aggregator so that those participating have the benefit of that information at their fingertips.”

This is the first time an initiative of this sort has been implemented in the region. Cheeks concedes that it has been conceptualised before, but Auto Data has been able to execute it with a very capable development team called C3T.

Thompson went on to say that when one has an automated system, that in itself can be a check that allows for an assessment of the data put into it, allowing one to significantly reduce the types of fraud generally encountered.

“In many cases we talk about ‘Buyer Beware!’. Auto Data is a tool that assists with this,” said Thompson. “The fact is, now you can get the history and the value of a vehicle associated with that risk. In the case of InstaVIN, it allows you, with a car that is imported, to get that extended data that you may not be able to achieve, given the systems that are currently in place.