PAY AS YOU DRIVE
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Pay-as-you-drive insurance seems to be a logical way of saving money on premiums during a recession. If work is thin on the ground and your trucks are doing fewer miles, it would seem sensible to link your insurance bill to the amount of work that you are doing.
Or it would be if anybody was offering such a scheme. The one major insurer to experiment with it, Norwich Union, withdrew it after trying it two years ago in a scheme that was intended to fix premiums.
A spokesman for the insurer says that using the black box technology necessary to monitor the policies did not prove cost effective.
Norwich Union trialled the scheme through around 50 brokers located across the country, and one of those who offered it says that part of the problem was that too often it was sold in the wrong way. He adds: "Most brokers sold it on the basis of fixing the premiums. It should have been sold on the basis of giving the hauliers meaningful information about their drivers and how they might better manage risk."