In an effort to help insurance companies curb fraud, the National Insurance Crime Bureau has created a database that will let car buyers search for unrecovered stolen cars before buying. But one industry association says the program could do even more with the help of insurers.
The Unrecovered Stolen Vehicle database logs the vehicle identification number (VIN) from every stolen vehicle reported by its 100+ member insurance companies. The information is then searchable by the public, free of charge. With an annual average recovery rate of just 63 percent, the NICB said several million vehicles remain unaccounted for and could possibly end up being purchased by unsuspecting consumers.
NICB took similar action following Hurricane Katrina when it created a flooded-car database. That program helped prevent hundreds of thousands of flood-damaged cars that had been declared totaled by insurance companies from being sold to the public.
While the announcement was welcomed by the insurance industry, not everyone believes the database reaches its full potential.
In a release, the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) said the NICB's database only addresses a portion of the problem. NADA is seeking public access to insurance companies' total-loss data to protect consumers from unknowingly purchasing a flood-damaged or severely wrecked vehicle. It cited pending legislation from Mississippi Senator Trent Lott and Florida Senator Cliff Stearns (see sidebar, Total Disclosure).
"NICB deserves credit for making the VINs of unrecovered stolen vehicles available to the car-buying public, but it only solves a small part of the problem," said Dale Willey, NADA chairman and a Kansas auto dealer, in a NADA release. "Since insurers acknowledge that access to insurer theft reports is valuable information to car buyers, why shouldn't insurance companies provide data for all severely wrecked, flood-damaged, or insurance-totaled vehicles? If insurers won't act in the best interests of the consumer and release this information, then Congress must insist upon it."
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