Insurers and CHO announce fundamental reforms to the GTA to cut claims costs and benefit customers requiring mobility

Credit hire companies and motor insurers have agreed a number of sweeping reforms to the
GTA which will reduce costs and benefit British motorists who require mobility when their
own vehicle is off the road.

Anthony Hughes, chair and CEO of the Credit Hire Organisation (CHO), the trade body for the
credit hire sector, and Pete Highfield (NFU Mutual), Insurance Lead on the new GTA Strategy
Board, said the revised GTA included four major new initiatives:

1. An annual independent vehicle hire rate review driven by market data
2. Compulsory arbitration where cases are not agreed and settled within a set number of
days following submission of a clean payment pack
3. A new set of late payment penalties
4. Clearer rules on the areas of argument/dispute in the arbitration process

Mr Hughes said: “For the past 18 months we have been working with both Insurers and the
ABI to conclude significant revisions and improvements to the GTA. Our strategic objective
has been clear from Day1; reduce or ideally remove frictional costs and put consumers at the
heart of the accident management process.”

Mr Highfield said: “Our collective aim is to create a fair and efficient mobility solution for
innocent accident victims, and to minimise friction by deploying a compulsory arbitration
process which minimises points of dispute and where operational efficiency is rewarded by
reduced claims cost.”

Mr Highfield added: We want the real winner to be the consumer by making the post-accident
journey as good as we can and to avoid dragging policyholders through the courts.

Anthony Hughes explained that another benefit from the agreement would be a reduction in
credit hire cases ending up in Court. “We estimate that as many as 100,000 credit hire cases
could be removed from the County Court if the reforms work as planned, which would greatly
benefit our hard pressed civil justice system.”

Turning to the Motor Insurance Taskforce (MIT), Mr Hughes said the revised GTA would control
the cost of credit hire claims with a knock on beneficial impact on drivers. “He noted: “Our
members support the objectives of the MIT and see in it the potential to play a crucial role in
shaping policies and practices within the motor insurance market, benefiting consumers and
the industry, which of course includes us as mobility solution providers.”

In a letter to Transport Secretary Louise Haigh MP, he said the CHO has outlined the work
that has been and is still to be done on the GTA, setting out how, when it is fully adopted, it
will create a claims process and environment with far less frictional cost, benefiting motor
insurance policyholders generally.

The CHO is keen to offer its services to the Taskforce in the event of mobility issues coming to
the table in the context of claims.

Mr Hughes said: “For more than 40 years, our members have played a vital role in the
provision of mobility solutions for insurance policy holders who have suffered a road traffic
accident, assisting hundreds of thousands of policy holders annually, providing then with the
ability to get to work, or take their children to school, while their own vehicle is off the road,
through no fault of their own.”