Valuations for appraisers: insurance experts will be checked for honesty
Expert technicians who assess damage in an accident will be stripped of their certification for two incorrect calculations. This follows from the draft order prepared by the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation. The actions of unscrupulous appraisers affect the interests of both insurance companies and motorists, experts say. Decisions to revoke the certification of experts who incorrectly assessed the damage from the accident should be as transparent and reasonable as possible, they emphasize. For more information, see the Izvestia article.
Two misses
The Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation has developed a draft of a new edition of the order "On establishing requirements for expert technicians conducting independent technical expertise of vehicles." The document has been published on the federal portal of draft regulatory legal acts. It sets out the rules under which an appraiser who has compiled an incorrect calculation of damage in an accident will have his accreditation revoked.
It is proposed to introduce a two-level control system for such specialists. For the first time, such an expert will simply be informed about the shortcomings he has made. If he commits a violation again within two years after that, this will become "an unconditional basis for revoking the certification." The Interdepartmental Attestation Commission will make decisions on this.
The grounds for revoking the certification may be, for example, inconsistencies between the information specified in the vehicle inspection report and (or) in the expert opinion, information contained in the accident documents; violations of the procedure established by the Unified Methodology for calculating the cost of materials, spare parts, and work related to the restoration of a damaged vehicle; violations of the procedure calculation of the amount of wear of components to be replaced, spare parts of components and assemblies; violation of the procedure for calculating the cost of usable residues in the event of complete loss of the vehicle and a number of other reasons.
"An expert technician, in respect of whom a decision has been taken to revoke the certification, has the right to send a second application for certification no earlier than six months after the date of revocation of the certification," the draft order says.
The risk of affiliation
The Ministry of Transport admits that now the mechanism for revoking the certification of expert technicians "does not have a detailed procedural study." The agency believes that the approach proposed in the new version of the order "creates an effective legal mechanism for excluding unscrupulous specialists from the register." This directly reduces the risks of making false conclusions that affect the cost of insurance payments for CTP, the ministry notes.
According to the data published by the Bank of Russia, a significant (+25.1%) increase in the amount of insurance payments for CTP was recorded in 2024. At the same time, the average payout per settled insured event increased by 15.5%, amounting to 91,176 rubles. Cases of deliberate overestimation of the damage volume are recorded by the regulator and directly affect the rise in insurance premiums, since the corresponding risks are forced into the tariff policy, the Ministry of Transport notes.
"One of the significant factors contributing to this increase is the risk of expert technicians being affiliated with the examination customers, which leads to conclusions that do not fully reflect the actual amount of damage," the accompanying documents to the draft order say.
Everyone is suffering
The draft order of the Ministry of Transport contains significant clarifications of the grounds for revoking the certification of unscrupulous expert technicians, the Russian Union of Motor Insurers (RSA) told Izvestia. Representatives of the Union, who are members of the Interdepartmental Attestation Commission, took an active part in the preparation of this document, the RSA noted.
The Union stressed that it is a question of combating not only the overestimation of the cost of repairs calculated by an unscrupulous expert technician, but also its underestimation. If the first negatively affects the financial situation of the insurer, the second does not allow the victim to receive compensation in the prescribed amount (if it is an insurance payment) or a referral for repairs in case of in-kind compensation), since the technical center cannot repair the car at low prices, the RSA noted.
— The determination of the amount of compensation for CTP is described in detail in the regulations: deviation in both directions is unacceptable. Strengthening measures to influence unscrupulous expert technicians is beneficial to both parties to the insurance contract. The RSA supports the grounds for informing the technician expert whose work was complained about and for revoking the certification in case of repeated violations, the press service of the Russian Union of Motor Insurers told Izvestia.
Transparency and validity
Unfortunately, different amounts of damage from road accidents from different experts are not uncommon, said Igor Morzharetto, a member of the Presidium of the Public Council under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation. Often, various fraudulent schemes in car insurance are based on this difference, he said.
— Of course, it is necessary to restore order in the ranks of experts who assess the damage and the amount of damage, weeding out unscrupulous specialists. But this screening should be as transparent as possible. Most likely, it will not be possible to completely please all parties to the insurance contract. But if experts are stripped of their certification for any complaint without understanding its essence, then very soon there will simply be no one to assess the damage from an accident," Igor Morzharetto is sure.
Valery Soldunov, a member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation and chairman of the All-Russian Society of Motorists, also believes that the consideration of complaints against expert technicians should be as reasonable, balanced and reasoned as possible.
The underestimation of payments in the CTP system is based on two basic principles: not accounting for all damages and reducing the cost of work and spare parts, said Anton Shaparin, Vice President of the National Automobile Union. They have been successfully mastered by many experts, he adds.
— The problem statement is exceptionally correct: such "experts" must be dealt with mercilessly. But the proposed project introduces excessively stringent requirements for appraisers, establishing a mechanism whereby they lose their accreditation for just two complaints. This may lead to the fact that the attestation commission will receive a wave of complaints against all accredited experts written by their competitor colleagues. As a result, only those who have managed to write such a slur faster than others will be on the market. This will hurt the entire insurance system," he told Izvestia.
According to the NAS Vice President, it is necessary not only to establish the most transparent and understandable criteria by which the actions of experts will be evaluated, but also to increase the number of complaints that eventually lead to disqualification.
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